The Quantum Error: Patriarch
by Rob Sears
Summary: Finale to the Quantum Error Trilogy! Sam McLeod has lost everything. His life has been ripped asunder, his family along with it. Old faces have emerged, eager to sink their claws into the vulnerable human. Vengeance for Sam's past sins will haunt him, every mistake laid bare. Soon Sam will realize that, in order to end his suffering, he must fight violence with violence.
1. Idyll I: The Novice

" _There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell."_

 _-Sean Lennon_

" _If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"_

 _-William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)_

* * *

The cramped box rumbled and vibrated heavily, jostling around the truck that was travelling at a fair clip. The metal hinges rattled annoyingly against one another, creating an appalling racket that kept the air filled with noise. The box itself was unsecured within the interior of the vehicle, save for a few other large and nondescript items that pinned it between the walls, preventing it from sliding and banging about. The box itself was a perfect cube, eight feet long on all three dimensions. Thickened steel, with a dull sheen that appeared midnight black in the darkness of the truck's interior to the point where it would not be visible upon first glance.

If it could be imagined, it was even darker inside that box.

Inside it was a quarian.

The quarian, a young fellow by the name of Ahrun, groaned as the truck hit a bump, sending him momentarily in the air as a weightless feeling lifted his stomach briefly. His head spun, created from the motion of the vehicle in addition to the fact that he had not had anything to drink for hours. It could have been days since he had even a sip of water even, for all Ahrun knew. He was exhausted, the dehydration simply making matters worse. For the entire length of the trip, he had been hedging imaginary bets against himself as to when this torturous and abusive ride would end. Ahrun had been inhabiting containers like this for what seemed like weeks, constantly shuttled from one location to the next, even though he knew the actual length of time was most likely only a couple of days.

He prayed to his Ancestors that this would be the last stop at the end of this journey.

Frantically, he rubbed his parched tongue against the roof of his mouth to dredge up some saliva. An exercise in futility – there was nothing to be gleaned. Angrily, Ahrun's stomach rumbled, seeking sustenance. Between his encroaching hunger and the constant yawing motions of the truck, it was a wonder that Ahrun had not thrown up yet, not that he could conjure anything to throw up at all. Perhaps it was for the best, Ahrun had heard that dry heaves were more unpleasant anyway.

Ahrun knew that he had been kidnapped. No question about it. What he had yet to learn exactly was why. Why him? Why a lowly quarian like himself? As far as he knew, he had done nothing wrong, nothing that would justify being snatched up like a sack of grain. Was it for a ransom? As much as he hated to demean himself and his race, Ahrun knew he wouldn't be worth much. Besides, who would pay for the release of someone like him?

Despite a long and thoughtful process of consideration, Ahrun figured that no one in their right mind would pay for his release.

The day of his capture, Ahrun had spent the entirety of it hollering to his captors on the other side of his thick, metal prison. A useless effort - he was ignored every time. He must have spent hours banging on the sides of the crate until his hands were colored black and blue underneath his enviro-suit, unable to pinpoint a structural weakness in its integrity. His voice had gone hoarse from his repeated shoutings, the pleads he had uttered to quell the raging maelstrom of confusion storming in his brain.

Days later, the storm had only grown, the isolation merely serving to add fuel to the fire.

Ahrun tried to remember back to his Pilgrimage days, which seemed so long ago in his mind. Five years, once a barrier seemingly insurmountable, now amounted to a singular blip in his existence. How ironic. He tried to place himself back into his teachings, his preparations for going out in the big, scary galaxy all by himself.

" _Place your trust in your people… and yourself,"_ he recalled Ra'vaa'Dhoza, his sponsor, lecturing him. _"You will find in others your dependence wanting."_

The young man frowned. That was certainly an unhelpful quote. Not only was it not pertinent to his situation, but it was a mindset that had been completely overturned in the last few years, what with the war and all. His people had resorted to looking outside their insular society for help and it had proven to provide them with a wondrous future. But that was certainly not relevant to the here and the now. Ahrun had to begrudgingly concede that nothing in his Pilgrimage training had helped him prepare for the possibility of a kidnapping.

Like him, his sponsors probably believed that no one would be so stupid as to kidnap a quarian. Ahrun bit back a snort. Shows what they knew.

Ahrun had long ceased in begging for answers from his captors. They had not shared even a word from him since he had been bagged from the wayward colony he had been living on in the Horsehead Nebula. It had been instantaneous, as far as Ahrun was concerned. Completely unaware of the danger that awaited him. One moment, he was just going to grab some rest in his trusty sleep pod within the habitation bay, the next he had woken to find himself cracked out of the pod and now trapped within a darkened crate, the exact same one he was inhabiting now.

Despite the futility of snatching a quarian, Ahrun knew that this sort of thing was not uncommon as of late. A rather recent development had been brewing over the past few months, apparently. He had heard reports of abductions of individuals occurring across the Terminus systems in intermittent intervals, much like what those Collector-things had done to the humans years ago. But these new instances were completely different than that operation carried out by those enthralled Protheans – these new abductions had all been completely focused on specific individuals in each case, instead of entire colonies. Many singular people, picked off from one world after another.

And all those individuals had been quarian.

Ahrun had seen the news regarding these patterns, but he had been cocky enough to think that he would never be part of the _v'rahk_ – the departed ones. He had figured that the abducted quarians had done something to deserve their disappearance. It had never occurred to him to imagine that the extreme randomness of the process would have put him in the crosshairs of his captors. Some humility might have benefited him, but hindsight was not going to be of much use right now.

He shuffled into a new position inside the box, trying to get more comfortable, but that was useless as well. His limbs were just not adjusting to the constant annoyances in this place. No comfort, no rest, Ahrun could not even tell if he had slept within the past solar cycle. His eyes tried to focus, but despite his natural ability to see somewhat well in the dark, the blackness of the box revealed nothing. It was hard to tell if this was all a hallucination brought on by myopia or not – he couldn't see a damn thing.

And then… the vibrations of the truck abruptly stopped.

All background sound evaporated in moments, creating a vacuum in Ahrun's ears. He yawed his jaw around in the newfound quiet, a high-pitched ringing starting to crop up in his eardrums. The pain of relief. At least there was something for him to focus on.

But such a respite was short lived when a series of heavy, metal thuds resounded throughout the container. Ahrun jerked up immediately at the noises and sensations, his glowing eyes growing wider behind his visor. His breath started to quicken uncontrollably, his legs trembled, and sweat began to bead upon the back of his neck. Ahrun muttered a quick prayer lowly, just begging that whatever waited for him on the other side would not be his death.

It would be a shame to die without having achieved understanding.

With a tortured scraping sound of metal against metal, the covering to the box opened up, allowing a wall of light to slam right into Ahrun's eyes. His darkened visor was useless against the illumination – he had been trapped in darkness for too long for any sort of night-vision capabilities to assist him. He was blind. Ahrun cried out in pain and quickly curled up into a ball upon the floor of the cage, quivering in agony as the light raked through his shut eyelids, tearing through his sensitive sclera to burn deep into his brain. A vibrant pinprick, bloodlessly impaling through flesh and bone. His panicked shouts turned to gasps as his lungs quickly emptied themselves of air, clamoring for fresh breath as he threw up his hands, trying to block out the light that was drowning him.

Rough hands then grabbed at his body, hoisting him upright before suddenly letting go. Ahrun fell, but just for a second, to crash pathetically on the cold floor. The quarian grunted, not seriously injured from the fall, but pained nonetheless. He reached out, smearing his palms across the floor, but it was hard to find purchase. The floor itself was smooth tile – not metal or stone. Bravely, he cracked an eyelid open as far as he dared, but he regretted doing so immediately.

White, the purest color of white that Ahrun had ever seen, assaulted his senses. He shut his eyes again with a whimper, but after a few moment of writhing around on the ground, he made another attempt to see. He took quick looks, trying to get a sense of where he was without permanently damaging his eyesight. Eventually, the outline of the six-wheeled truck that brought him here became apparent, as did the blurry forms of his captors, and the smudged silver accents of his own enviro-suit, but apart from seeing these dimly colored blobs, that was about as much detail that his strained eyes could manage at this point.

With a cough, Ahrun deliberately blinked hard. Nope, he was still seeing double. His three-fingered hands groped at the floor, desperate to touch something tangible while he slowly recovered on the ground.

Something hit him in the back firmly and Ahrun curled up instinctively.

"Get up," a harsh voice commanded.

That accent… Ahrun realized. It was… _Khelish?_ His captors were _quarian?_

Another blow came, this time at his thigh. Apparently hesitation was not tolerated here.

" _Now_ ," another said, confirming Ahrun's suspicions.

Ahrun didn't need to be told again. Ignoring the strained feeling from his tortured muscle fibers as he shakily got to his feet, he tenderly poked and prodded the areas of his silver and gray enviro-suit that were most susceptible to tearing. His brief examination did not indicate that he was in any sort of mortal danger and at least he was able to see a little better now that some time had passed.

The room he was in was large, practically a hangar. The floor was a spotless white tile and the four walls surrounding the empty plain were of the same color. The ceiling was an ugly maze of support beams and rafters, with a few gangways bolted on to allow people to walk overhead. Aside from the roof over his head, the room itself was practically featureless. Ahrun turned on the spot, looking to and fro, his confusion ever mounting.

The click of a thermal clip being slotted into a chamber drew his attention. Between him and the truck stood four well-armed quarians. They did not look at all like regular marines – these individuals were heavily armored and taller than him by about half a head. Their suits were not bequeathed with the usual accoutrements, either – they bore no crest, no family pattern on their hoods. Blank slates, much like the very room that they were standing in.

One of his captors stepped forward, a large handgun clenched in a fist. Fear rooting him to the spot, Ahrun could only stare as the large quarian lifted the weapon, the barrel aimed squarely at Ahrun's head. But before a panicked cry could tear its way through the frightened man's throat, the larger quarian gave a flick of his wrist, the one holding the gun, indicating for Ahrun to look in that direction.

The tendons in his neck squealed in protest, but the tightness in Ahrun's body began to relax as he beheld a simple door upon the nearest wall.

"Inside," he heard the quarian growl behind him.

Ahrun dredged up whatever shambles of courage that were floating around in the pit of his stomach, eliciting a weary sigh of acceptance. He moved forward, away from the truck, away from the men, eager to put some distance between everything, even if he did not fully understand the big picture.

The door slid shut quietly behind him, the lock silently cycling into place. Ahrun continued to blink as he trudged forward into yet another luminescent room about the same size as the last one, only to find out that he was far from alone in this place.

Dozens upon dozens of quarians, not armored ones like the ones outside but normally clad ones like himself, milled about the area, congregating in timid groups or trying to savor time all by their lonesome selves. A sea of muted color, all chattering away in the familiar language that his people spoke: Khelish.

The missing quarians, Ahrun realized. That was one piece of the puzzle in place at least, but the context was far from being revealed. Why was everyone here to begin with? Why were quarians kidnapping their own kind?

There were long tables set up in one corner of the gigantic room, to be utilized for whatever purpose that was deemed of importance, whether it be eating, conversing, or what not. Upon the far wall stood an assortment of various metal objects – bits and pieces of heavy rubbish that Ahrun recognized as weight equipment. Evidentially their tormentors were idiots, providing their captives with items that could be utilized against them or they were offered simply as a way to exercise their captives' minds from boredom.

High above, about ten meters over the ground, a thin metal gangway circled around the central area. Ahrun could see a couple more of the armored quarians slowly pace around the circuit, taking a few uninterested glances down below at him. Their attentions were not rapt, distant. For good reason, Ahrun supposed. There were no clear avenues of escape that he could spot right off the bat. Aside from the door behind him (which had been locked securely using a dedicated circuit) there was no way out of this place at first glance, unless he found a way to scale the featureless walls without getting shot in the process.

Ahrun simply had to bite his lip, conceding himself to the notion that he could very well be here for a long while.

Sets of glowing eyes belonging to his brethren were now gradually being drawn towards his direction. Curiosity for the new guy. It was hard for a quarian to radiate embarrassment, but Ahrun knew that any small change in his body language would definitely not go unnoticed around these people. Hesitation, fear, the slightest change would not go amiss. Even if these were all people abducted without reason Ahrun in no way felt safe. This technically _was_ a prison, after all, and prisons never exactly held a good track record in the back of his mind, as it was for most species in this sorry galaxy.

But what to do? How to hold up a flag to signal his intent? He couldn't just go barging into a group uninvited in the hopes that he would gain some support. No, he needed to weigh his options, keep himself at a distance to observe and report silently. Determinations for where he would best fit in would be made in due time, but he needed to figure that out soon.

Although, if his hunger for answers kept on gnawing at his gut, irrationality just might prioritize itself over his need for self-preservation.

Ahrun swallowed, tasting bile. Keenly aware that dozens of sets of eyes were examining his every movement under a microscopic stare, he focused intently on how his body was acting as he deliberately began to step over to the wall nearest to his left – where the least amount of quarians were grouped. Enough space for him to collect his thoughts and plan his next moves.

Others apparently had other plans for him as a trio of quarians quickly moved from where they were standing on an intercept course for Ahrun. Their suits were a motley collection of gray, black, and orange hues, and their stiff postures worried Ahrun. Somehow, he didn't believe that this was going to be a friendly courtesy call. He braced himself for trouble.

The gray quarian stepped in front of him, blocking his route, while the black and orange quarians swiftly moved on either side of Ahrun. No one spoke for a moment, leaving Ahrun to glance from side to side wearily, spying no methods of a clean escape.

"Let me guess," Ahrun sighed, his shoulders drooping in resignation while he tilted his head. He was not so stupid that he had no idea how this was going to pan out. "Establishing the pecking order?"

The gray quarian nodded, his fists beginning to clench. "We need to know where you stand among us."

"I'm still trying to find out."

"Don't worry. You'll learn quickly. Men your age, you always learn quickly. As such, I hope you won't take this personally."

Already it resonated with Ahrun that he would not be walking away with any more answers or clarifications after this little encounter. It was also safe to assume that he would be sporting a few bruises too. He was about to make a biting comment, one concerning that the upcoming fisticuffs was in no way relevant to the looming context, of which he still lacked understanding, but it seemed the time to bring that up had passed by without him having time to react.

Ahrun's arms were suddenly grabbed and held still in place by the black and orange suited quarians while the gray one readied his arm. His attacker gently placed a hand on Ahrun's collar to steady himself.

"It will all become clear in time. Just let it happen, _qi'lan_."

Now Ahrun started to struggle uselessly, too panicked to even think clearly. He was certainly not willing to "let this happen," let alone give these _bosh'tets_ the satisfaction from submission.

His inner armor shattered, as did what little pretense of bravery remained, when the first blow sank into his stomach. It was not as hard as Ahrun thought it was going to be, but it still hurt nonetheless. Ahrun folded in half with a yelp, coughing as his battered stomach throbbed. His lungs shivered as they strived to bring in more air and his legs began to tremble. He would have collapsed on the floor if he was not being held aloft by these two goons. This was not even honorable, three against one! Where had the sanity of these men fled to? These were his _people_ , damn it! Why assault their own?

Honor, as Ahrun would come to learn, had been cast out the door the moment every person had been thrown in here. What good were morals and codes in a lawless vacuum? Why waste time on being civil, anyway? There was still much that Ahrun had to find out in this place, this purgatory.

Another fist smashed itself into Ahrun's rib cage. Now Ahrun yelled even louder. Despite his cries, he could clearly see that all the quarians, once appraising him rapturously upon his entrance, now had turned away dispassionately. His yells were certainly carrying to the end of the gigantic room – it was just that everyone was deliberately ignoring them. Confusion kept rising higher and higher. What was _happening_ here?

The gray suited quarian now grabbed Ahrun's helmet where his chin was, intent on delivering a strike to the side of his head. Ahrun was just about to shut his eyes fearfully when a shadow suddenly fell over the group and Ahrun's attacker was yanked back abruptly, a strong fist now clenching upon the multitude of tubes that ran from the back of his helmet. The quarian screamed in panic before he devolved into a fit of coughing as the shadow's fist quickly slammed into his back, right atop the kidney.

"I _told_ you what would happen last time, Roril!" the towering figure growled at the gagging quarian he now held in his clutches. The new arrival shifted his grip to wrap around the quarian's neck, his eyes leering and dangerous. "You were very stupid to think that I was bluffing."

The quarian being choked, whose name was apparently Roril, tried to breathe a reply. Not so easy with a hand clenched around his windpipe. The figure then smashed a fist so hard into Roril's gut that even Ahrun had to shut his eyes out of reflex. This guy was not joking around as Roril was now allowed to flop to the ground, temporarily incapacitated as he was now the one who struggled for air.

The pressure at Ahrun's arms ceased and he was finally allowed to slide to the ground, his legs having ceased working minutes ago. The orange suited quarian, the one that had been holding Ahrun's left arm, adopted an aggressive stance at the new combatant.

"L-Look," the quarian stammered, clearly unnerved, "we were only going to go easy on the guy. It wasn't-,"

He had no more time to explain further because the quarian staggered as he was clocked firmly on the side of the head, knees wobbling and unsteady. The man that had come to Ahrun's aid did not appear to be pained from punching a quarian's helmet in a full-on hit. He instead strode forward to lift the man up off the ground by the straps that enveloped his suit, the quarian becoming more unintelligible by the second.

"Did you think that _I_ would go easy on you?" the shadow whispered in a menacing taunt.

The man did not wait for an answer from the stammering quarian. Instead, he lurched forward in a gigantic step, hurling the orange-suited quarian out of his grip in a massive toss. His opponent sailed through the air, almost appearing weightless, to land with a tremendous thud a few meters away.

He didn't bother getting up.

There was just the black-suited quarian to deal with now, and he was completely frozen in place. For good reason – he had just seen two of his cohorts handedly dispatched in no time flat by this man, this… demon. Continuing the fight seemed like a poor choice to make, considering the evidence around him.

The man straightened, peering at the quarian that was still standing. "I trust that you won't make the same mistake again, Janath? No more beating up your own people, understand?"

"W-We… we w-won't," the black suited quarian affirmed as he slowly began to back away. "Whatever you s-say… Ahto Da'var."

Ahrun blinked at the mention of the name, but the towering man scowled instead. His savior gave a brusque motion with his head, an indication to leave, which the assailant took immediately.

With the threats now unceremoniously departed, the man reached down toward Ahrun, offering a hand. Ahrun was about to take it gratefully when he noticed, for the first time, that the appendage was not wreathed in an enviro-suit like everyone else. No, the man's hand was larger than a quarian's, ungloved, with five fingers instead of three, and… pink skin.

A… _human?_ This day was getting crazier by the second.

Now Ahrun was extremely confused, but he finally took the hand that had been offered regardless, appreciating the help. Of course he was inquisitive of the fact that a _human_ had been his guardian in this place, but he was considering that he should be thankful of the fact that salvation had been offered in some form.

"Suit's intact?" the human asked, concern momentarily wrinkling his brow.

"I… uh…" Ahrun mumbled as he quickly gave himself a once-over, finding nothing of concern. "Seems fine, actually. Just having trouble breathing a bit from where I was hit."

"Hmm," the human considered, frowning.

Now that Ahrun was allowed a moment to relax, he could behold this human a little more closely. He was taller than Ahrun by about half a head, with slightly ruffled brown hair no more than two inches in length. A thick beard encased the man's face, closely cropped to his skin – a feature that Ahrun associated with age, with his limited knowledge of humans. His eyes were steel blue, but Ahrun was able to see faint lines of circuitry glowing underneath the sclera – implants. The human was broad-shouldered with a defined muscle structure. Upon the man's left forearm, Ahrun could spy the faded circular mark of a tattoo - some weird pattern that meant absolutely nothing to the quarian, but had to have some significance to the human. There were multiple scars running across the flesh of his arms, overshadowing his colored markings, and one horrific scar that ran along the left side of his neck like a white bolt of lightning - a jagged reminder of what had to be a terrible wound. Ahrun had seen humans in better shape before but it was obvious that this one was quite fit in any case. The clothing the human wore was simple: black tank-top and pants. Nothing that would normally make him stand out of the crowd, but seeing as everyone in this place was quarian, he stuck out naturally like a sore thumb.

The human gazed wistfully across the room. "Take away their freedom by putting them in a place like this and all concepts of community crumble with it," he murmured to no one in particular. "Thought I had fixed it. Stamped out their aggression this time…"

"Excuse me?" Ahrun piped up, causing the stone-faced human to turn.

The man just shook his head. "Talking to myself. It's been the first time in a long time that I've had to beat some sense into these fools, is all." He then waved Ahrun on. "You can go. No one will probably bother you any longer, unless you wish to deliberately start trouble."

"I… I can't leave," Ahrun said indignantly. "I need answers!"

"Don't we all," the human rasped with a sad smile. He put his hands into his pockets and casually shrugged.

"I need to know what's going on here! What do they want with me?! And… not to sound rude, but who are you?"

"What's going on here? This is the gateway to hell and you've just been reserved a spot in the line to go in. Unless you have a few minutes it's not exactly something I can condense down into a blurb."

"Something tells me that I have enough time," Ahrun growled, his voice echoing consciously inside the chamber. "Why was I kidnapped and put into this… place?!"

"Same reason why everyone else is here," the human gestured. "Except me, obviously. No, I'm here because of something different. Completely unrelated to your plight. _You_ , on the other hand, are here because you're just what the lunatic in charge of this place is looking for: young, quarian men. You're to be… _conscripted_ into his unit because, well… he prefers to be surrounded by his own kind. He has a certain hatred for other species."

"So this prison… is run by a _quarian?_ Why is he doing this to me? To his own kind?"

The human glanced up at the ceiling, as if he was wondering the same thing himself. "You're at an impressionable stage. Young, malleable. Your captor, for lack of a better term, wants to build himself an army made up of people like you to do nothing but follow his will."

Ahrun frowned, the concept ringing a bell. "Like what Admiral Xen was doing back on Rannoch a while back. The civil war. I'm to be a part of that?!"

" _Exactly_ like that," the human nodded grimly. "But there were some individuals who took cues from Xen's tactics, who were in support of the rogue admiral, that they've been putting them to use even after her trial. The guards you see roaming the perimeter up there? On the catwalks? They used to be down here with us in the beginning. They're the perfect example of how one's will can be imparted onto another."

"That… that can't be true," Ahrun swayed as he followed the path traced by the human's index finger. It was almost too much to take, the horrendous idea of letting this happen to his fellow quarians. "How could they stand by and be in support of this? Enforce our imprisonment?"

"You'd be surprised at how effective torture can break a man, especially one who's gone their whole life without knowing what true pain really feels like. It's inelegant, but it apparently works. Eventually all of you will be up among the rafters, staring down at a fresh batch of unwilling participants to make sure that they don't try to escape. Any resistance, and the man in charge unleashes his men on you. Happens all the time."

Ahrun took a few steps back, examining the guards and the human in a rapidly alternating fashion. "That won't happen to me. I won't let them take my mind."

The human sadly shrugged again, his expression worryingly placid. "That might not be a choice you get to make. People have said the same thing before you. They're looking down on us right now. It's not a future that I'll get to experience, though. No, I've been left in here to rot, taken from my life, my friends… my family. Whatever I had left of a family, at least. I'm not going to get a way out like you. I've spent four months in this place already - I don't think one will _ever_ be afforded to me, after what I've done."

"But what did _you_ do?" Ahrun urged. "You're one human out of dozens of quarians. What made you different? What reason do you have for being here?"

There was an uncomfortable scraping sound as the human gritted his teeth together, deep in contemplation. For a moment, Ahrun swore he saw a cold fire alight in the depths of the human's eyes, the kind of raw fury that encapsulates a man with so much to lose. The human's body seemed to thrum with a dark energy, muscles squirming beneath the flesh as intangible pain came to bear. And then it all vanished as the human focused himself again, taking a deep breath from a constrained throat.

"I guess you could say that I wronged our captor a while back, depending on your point of view. Around the time of the civil war, in fact. In my eyes, I am guiltless of this wrongdoing, but I would be remiss if I said that my being here has no ulterior purpose. The only reason that I'm here is because the two of us, our captor and I, lived out our lives differently. We were born in different places, made different choices. It was only natural for us to clash upon our first meeting, as two opposing forces can only meet with violence. He once said to me a year ago that he would find a way to hurt me eventually. Suffice to say, he succeeded."

The human then shifted his eyes around suspiciously. "This way," he ordered as he crept into a slow gait, his long legs striking out an even rhythm. Ahrun had to trot just to keep up. "In time you will be offered an opportunity from our 'benefactor' shortly to join his little group. Not right away, he likes to let his new catches… stew."

"The… benefactor?" Ahrun repeated in disbelief. "You mean he'll torture me if I refuse?"

"Oh, he'll torture you if you agree to join him right away. He doesn't want someone who's so quick to change sides on his team. But if you resist, you'll be tortured regardless. Rest assured, quarian, your first meeting will not be a pleasant one."

"What is he like? The man in charge?"

"A very disagreeable sort," the human managed a tight, pained grin. "Although I do gain some enjoyment trying to piss him off whenever we have a conversation together. I guess you could say I'm a slow learner, though. Each time I anger him, he leaves me with a token of his displeasure."

Ahrun's eyes were drawn to the scar at the human's neck. It looked rather fresh… not to mention painful. He wondered if he should ask if that was one of the 'tokens' the human had mentioned, but decided against it, fearing that it may seem impolite.

"So what do I call you?" Ahrun asked as they headed into an archway, into an offshoot of the larger hangar, this one only occupied by a few lowly benches. "You were called 'Ahto Da'var' back there, and that's probably not your real name. I've never heard of a human having a Khelish name before."

The human laughed, a horrid, rasping sound as he found the nearest bench to sit down upon it. "Very astute of you," he said quite sarcastically after letting out a groan. "No, you don't need to know my name, quarian. Not yet. Bad things happen to the people who get to know me. The ones who resided here gave me that name you just uttered probably to mock. I sincerely doubt that they call me 'Da'var' out of respect."

"Still, it's odd that they called you _'Ahto_.' I would assume that they would use the word ' _Ide'_ to precede your moniker instead. Why call you " _Our_ " instead of " _The_ P-?"

"I _know_ what the name means," the human named Da'var sternly interrupted with a cutting motion of his hand. "And I don't need to hear it repeated to me every time, quarian. I've hung around you lot a good enough while to add a fair bit to my Khelish vocabulary. The name itself most likely stemmed from my tendency to… pacify any conflicts that might arise here."

Ahrun felt his face flush. "Stop calling me 'quarian.' You can call me Ahrun'Uniel vas Rannoch, but don't call me 'quarian!'"

Da'var waggled a finger with a sly grin. "Not anymore. You're not 'vas Rannoch' in this place. In here, like everyone else, you're 'vas _Nedas_.' Crew of nowhere. But I will call you Ahrun, if you wish."

"Fine," Ahrun scowled. "Do you want me to keep calling you Da'var, despite the fact you hate the name?"

"I never said I hated the name. It is what it is. A reminder of someone I used to be a long time ago. It is a fitting title, a fitting punishment. It may have been bestowed upon me, but I firmly embrace it. If I make armor from the weapons of those against me, I'm invincible."

Ahrun shook his head blithely. "So you always make a show of keeping some semblance of order around here? Is _that_ why you beat up the men attacking me?"

"Would you believe me if I said that I did it out of the naïve goodness of my heart?" Da'var made an exaggerated show of placing his hand upon the spot where the mentioned organ was before he shook his head with a smirk. "Nah, things aren't that black and white. I've found that, being the only human in this place, I have a natural advantage at being able to overpower pretty much most quarians. You guys lack the maximum muscle strength that humans possess. The drama, the cliques, they only do more harm than good in a prison. For a while, before you were here, things were chaos. Fights were breaking out every day, people were getting seriously hurt in an effort to keep their heads up above the waves. Someone had to step in and nip the aggression in the bud. No one else would do it, so I figured that I might as well be the one. Call it foolhardy or just plain dumb, but it gave me purpose. I needed something to keep me sane."

"You look pretty sane to me," Ahrun offered.

Da'var jerked in a silent laugh, his cold eyes turning distant again. Something more locked behind that gaze. Sadness, definitely. This human was pained.

"Just barely holding on," came the hoarse whisper, and Ahrun swore that he saw the makings of a tear begin to pool in the corner of one of the human's eyes before it was unknowingly blinked away.

Da'var, looking to distract himself, began to examine the hand that had struck the helmet of one of Ahrun's attackers just minutes ago, finding that it had been cut open from impacting the sharp metal. He flexed the limb, causing weathered joints to creak and pop, tenderly rubbing at the wound with a thumb. All the while, Ahrun could not take his eyes off the older, scarred man.

Before he could turn away, Da'var suddenly locked eyes with him.

"You haven't talked to many humans before, have you?" he said, his tone indicating that he knew the answer anyway.

"Not really," Ahrun admitted. "But you've met many quarians."

"You… you could say that. I've encountered a few from time to time."

"Including the one who holds our lives in his hand."

"Including him."

"Will you… at least, tell me how you came to be here?"

The human smirked as he reclined on the bench, his eyes momentarily lifting upwards towards the corrugated and dim roof before fixating back on Ahrun. Despite his inexperience in dealing with the species, Ahrun realized that this human had to be different than most. He really did lack the sort of standoffishness that many species had when talking to his people. Asari, turian, salarian, no matter the race, it was all in their body language – most individuals had no idea what kind of reference point to look at when speaking to a quarian, and humans were no different. It was probably the masks. The lack of facial expressions had a hand in unnerving most people they conversed with because it was such a departure from their norm. Take away the ability to discern a simple facial gesture, a wrinkle of the brow, even a smile, and things become quite anxious for one side. Many would never figure out how to properly speak with a quarian in their life.

This was not the case with this man. He knew exactly where to stare, his gaze never wavering. There was no hesitation in his voice, no visible unease in speaking to someone with a face-obscuring mask. This human… there was definitely more going on behind the scenes.

"You really want to hear the story?" Da'var asked, his gaze hurling spears in Ahrun's direction. "I warn you, it's not going to be a nice one."

"If it leads me to the answers I want, then I want to hear it," Ahrun gritted.

Through clenched teeth, the human slowly breathed out as he indicated the seat next to him upon the bench. A calloused invitation from a five-fingered individual.

"You might want to sit down."

* * *

 **A/N: Hello there.**

 **So, welcome back to what is the final chapter of the _Quantum Error_ trilogy: _Patriarch_! After taking a short break and revamping my outline several times (because the first draft of this outline was, quite frankly, atrocious), I'm back to finish this story. Please let me know if I'm doing anything you particularly like or dislike with this story. I'm always open to feedback.**

 **As this chapter might have hinted, this really is not going to be a sunshine-and-butterflies kind of story. If you are familiar with the kind of content that I've produced in my previous works, then I should point out that the upcoming chapters will contain scenes that make any of my past stories seem like kids novels. This will have all of my literary tendencies turned up to 11, no holds barred. Time will tell if this will pay off, but for now, you have been warned... because the angst will begin with the next chapter release! Heh, heh.**

 **I have to point out that a lot of things have changed in my personal life between this story and my last. Therefore, chapters will be released on a much slower schedule than usual, because I will have even less time to write over the weeks. I don't foresee any chapters taking up to a month to complete, but you'll just have to pardon my slow pace for the time being.**

 **And since no one objected to my inclusion of a personal handpicked playlist for the last story, I'm bringing it back! Recommend you try to read some of these scenes with the indicated music - I try to make sure that each one fits the chapter.**

 **I hope you enjoy _Patriarch_!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Ahrun Wakes: "Ultimatum" by Johann Johannsson from the film _Arrival_.**

 **The Quarian Meets the Human: "The Execution" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_**

 **Sam McLeod's Theme: "V Has Come To" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**


	2. Chapter 1: Empty Nest

_The Citadel - four months earlier_

" _McLeod!_ Sam McLeod!"

Ah… damn it all.

Unwilling to let the unwelcome sound of my own name brutally rip me from my sleep, I willed myself not to let the pleasant black tendrils release me from their grip. The unconscious plateau that I had been lingering in for the past few hours was the only relief that I had managed to seize in that time. These blissful moments of serenity – my sleep – was the only place that I could look to find respite. To be called back into living, into action, always seemed so unfair.

Upon the awful cot which I slept, I stirred my body lethargically, my limbs crying out from having spent too much time upon the flattened surface, the mattress itself having been pounded into a pancake from repeated use. I grunted in annoyance. It was only a matter of time before I awoke fully. It had only seemed like I had just begun to get some semblance of REM sleep before the guard's voice had prevented me from achieving such a state when he had barked out my name. Despite how hard I fought, I let out a yawn, my limbs stretching to iron out all the kinks that had set in over the past few hours. Light began to spill into my eyes, drowning me with an unfocused mantle of obscured phenomena, to reveal an inherently unfamiliar setting.

I heard my name called again and I instinctively mumbled an incoherent reply, but it quelled the outside shouts for the moment. With a heavy sigh, I heaved myself to, squinting my eyes shut to force out the pounding headache that began to dance merrily upon my skull. There was also a slight burning sensation upon my chest, but I found that I was able to disregard that easily. After mustering through the pain, I opened my eyes some more and looked down at myself to rediscover that I had slept in my normal clothes during the night. I then consciously tried to smooth out the wrinkles of my shirt to a state where I would not look so disheveled upon first glance. It didn't look pretty, but at least I looked less homeless.

My breath stank - I needed to brush my teeth, but my cell was lacking in that sort of amenity. It was predictably bare bones, as most jail cells were. Aside from the pathetic cot that had been bolted onto the wall, across from where I sat hung a shelf to hold items not considered contraband, and to my immediate right a toilet and sink combo were positioned to face the hallway. Not much in terms of privacy, but digs like this were not supposed to provide any semblance of comfort to their guests. But as to what I was provided, it could have been much worse, given the sad history regarding jails on my world. I was at least thankful that a cell like this on the Citadel was considerably cleaner than any of the cells back on Earth. From my memory, the majority of the jails there were constructed of poor materials like cinder blocks and mortar, a very ramshackle environment compared to the matte and spotless metallic architecture the Citadel utilized. The facilities here had soft edges and were easy on the eyes, not to mention a ton shinier. One had to see the silver linings wherever possible – it helped keep me sane that way.

I swung my feet off the cot and onto the hard, silvery floor. If I hadn't been wearing shoes I would have shivered from feeling the cold metal on my bare feet. Taking a moment to crack my back, I splashed some water on my face from the sink before I trudged over to where a shimmering blue barrier separated me from the hallway outside. The energy field slightly distorted the figure of the turian guard standing on the other side, bits of static quickly flitting their way across in intermittent intervals. It wasn't enough for me not to make out the C-Sec insignia upon the turian's shoulder pads, a silent announcement of authority in case it was not already obvious to me. This _was_ their jail, after all.

As I rubbed at my eyes so not to appear too fatigued, I approached to within a foot of the cell's barrier and then proceeded to cover yet another yawn. God, I could kill for a cup of coffee right about now.

The turian and I regarded each other through the thin, wobbling field, the only expressions on his face being conveyed by his eyes, as turians lacked the kind of facial muscles that humans possessed. "You all sobered up now, McLeod?" he asked.

"Somewhat," I grumbled as I began to scratch my neck before grabbing my jacket that I had previously discarded last night from the floor of my cell. "So, what's the occasion for this social call so early in the morning? Dare I say that this is beneficial to my predicament?"

"You could say that. You're actually being released today. As in, right now."

I bumped my eyebrows. That _was_ certainly good news. I was not expecting to be locked in here for very long, mind you, but some forces must have been hard at work to spring me after only spending 8 hours in this room.

"I'm going to drop the barrier now," the officer narrowed his eyes before he prepared his omni-tool. "Please assume the proper position. With your cooperation, you'll be out of here in less than half an hour."

God knows that I certainly wanted to cooperate. It was in my best interest, after all. I may be an idiot but I'm not that stupid as to behave in a manner that could potentially delay my release. So after I quickly put on my jacket, I stepped into the middle of the room, my wrists crossed together wide out in front of me. As soon as he deemed that I was following the requisite protocols properly, the officer tapped at a control on his omni-tool and the barrier between us faded with a fizzing sound. The pressure in my ears took a tiny dive and I yawned again to regulate the difference.

The officer strode forward, and with a practiced maneuver, effortlessly slapped a pair of omni-cuffs onto my wrists. "You just comply with the formalities for now and this will all go smoothly," he spoke close to my face, like the words were leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

"I doubt you'll have anything to fear," I said as I let myself be gently led into the nondescript hallway.

Unlike the stereotypical image of what the interior of a jail might seem like, things were quite serene within the Citadel's counterpart. Like the architecture of the cells, the hallways connecting the rooms were almost textureless, smooth paneled steel warping around corners to easily exude an atmosphere of calm. Hell, there were even trellises filled with mossy plants hanging upon the sides of the walls! The staff and population within this place also helped to facilitate the harmonious mood. There were no belligerent inmates hollering up a storm nor were there any distracting noises from the outside of the station to create an uncomfortable environment. Everyone, from the guards to the prisoners, looked rather _bored_. Apparently that's the kind of atmosphere that a space station's confinement residence exudes.

"How the hell was I managed to be released so early anyway?" I asked out loud. "I was in and out in no time at all."

"Your lawyer," the guard said. "From what I heard, he presented his case for your release quite insistently. And loudly."

That made sense. My lawyer, Gareth, was quite the motormouth even when he was not doing his job. He also was not technically _my_ lawyer as his job was to represent all the resident staff at the hospital that I worked at, which incidentally qualified him as my advocate to bail me out in times like this. He was good, very efficient at his job, even if that did come with a few caveats concerning his personal behavior.

For one, Gareth was so chatty, so hyper, that I had suspected for the longest time that he was on some sort of prescription or otherwise illicit substance to make him like that. It wasn't the case, because Gareth naturally had a high energy about him, but that didn't stop me from suspecting if he deliberately amped up his traits from time to time. You had to admit that it probably the perfect disposition for a guy to have in his career, one that required a precise absorption of every singular minutia of detail and being able to craft that into a workable defense… or offense, considering the case.

Despite his potentially annoying attitude, Gareth's track record preceded him. He and I had met on a few occasions during a couple board meetings where his services were being utilized for a variety of suits, such as a few libel ones here, a malpractice one there. He was always trusted to take care of things for the hospital in court, and he won nearly every time or managed to negotiate a settlement that his clients were always satisfied with. We weren't friends, but we did know each other well to a degree. I knew that I was not looking forward to seeing his smug face once I got out, for he was only going to hang this incident over my head as long as I continued to work at the hospital.

Shit, I realized. This was going to have to be something that I would have to explain to my bosses back at work. If they had their best lawyer down here for my defense, then it was a no-brainer that they knew about my incarceration. I was going to figure out a way how to spin this in my favor once I returned to the hospital, hoping that they would be able to understand the chain of events from my point of view. In my case, the evidence had probably been so overwhelmingly in my favor that I presumed that Gareth had bathed the helpless C-Sec officers in his sights up to their eyeballs in legal terms and potential repercussions. But even if this snafu resulted in a light, legal snap on the wrist, I knew that the board of directors did not like their staff having any entanglements with the authorities. Already I was walking on thin ice.

Still, I had bigger things to worry about, if it could be believed.

"Do you have a contact number for someone to pick you up or do want to go with your lawyer?" the guard asked me as we rounded a corner, a checkpoint visible about a hundred meters away.

I would sooner ingest cyanide than spend a skycar ride, even for a minute, trapped and being forced to submit to Gareth's incessant chatting. Instead I rattled off a number from memory to the guard of a person that would be a little more sympathetic to my situation… not to mention quieter.

We followed a yellow path that had been painted on the ground that led to the jail's exit, continuing past the same blank architecture that instilled similar thoughts in my head. While we walked, the guard busied himself with sending a message to the contact that I had provided him with, while I surreptitiously glanced down my shirt at my chest, gingerly prodding the still-reddish, circular area an inch below my collarbone where I had been hit with an electrified baton last night.

The mark, a trademark sign of electrical irritation, had been courteously provided by C-Sec during a scuffle that I had with a couple of their officers prior to me being deposited into a cell. At least it looked to be healing nicely. I had only just received the wound, and it bet that it had been one of the crucial pieces of evidence that enabled me to walk free a little early. Admittedly, my being here was mostly my fault to begin with, but it had to be pointed out that bad mistakes had been made on both sides in what would prove to be an especially shitty situation for all parties involved.

Yet it was not the worst mistake I had made in a while. But I certainly could have handled things a hell of a lot better last night. I knew that much, at least. It was the most vivid thing I had to think about while desperately trying to grab some shut-eye on the galaxy's stiffest bed.

 _The start of my miscreant endeavor started out when I made the odd and spontaneous decision to make a sojourn to a nearby bar, about a half hour walk away from my place. Truth be told, I had been cooped up for weeks on end, not including the times when I was at work, and I felt that I needed to get out and do something that didn't involve me sitting on my ass for the remainder of the night. Rather unwisely, for some reason a visit to a bar was my first choice. This idea should never have manifested, given the kind of mental state that I was in, but the need for variety overrode the need for sanity._

 _Strike one._

 _Due to a tragic combination of events that had transpired long beforehand, I ended up drinking pretty heavily as the night went on. I could not give an explanation as to why I thought such a thing was a good idea, but drinking myself into a stupor just felt right. It gave me a very fleeting peace the drunker I became. Everyone else in the bar was functioning normally, the dancers were having the time of their lives, the patrons were chatting and laughing, but I was hunched over the counter, knocking back scotch after scotch. The alcohol took control quickly. Never before in my life had I been so intoxicated - not since I stumbled across space, time, and universes to land in this place. It was a minor miracle that I had not thrown up that night, even after seven respectably full glasses of Macallan._

 _Despite how sloshed I became that night, at some point when the next solar cycle had passed over did I make the decision to go back home. I was at least cognizant enough to have some perception of time, no matter how slight. However, I was impaired to the point that I, having the inclination to get back home, wandered over to a nearby lot and made several unsuccessful attempts to enter a locked skycar that didn't belong to me. I didn't bust any windows in frustration, I just tugged limply at the driver's side handle, becoming increasingly confused as to why the damn thing didn't open. I could have called a taxi to take me back home, but I could never have figured out that solution in my drunken state._

 _Strike two._

 _Yet my streak of bad luck would officially begin when a pair of C-Sec officers spotted my pathetic stumbling outline while I was unknowingly trying to break my way into a parked skycar, one that was not registered in my name. Now, any officer with half a brain or an ounce of sympathy would gently defuse this situation to extinguish any misunderstandings and work to get the intoxicated individual back home safely so that they might not put others in danger or frighten anyone in the vicinity._

 _That was not what these officers did._

" _Oh mate, you're fucked now," I can expressly recall as their first words to me._

 _Displaying a naked lack of compassion for a confused drunkard, these officers apparently had some quota to fill for ticketed individuals, which is the only explanation that I could figure because why else would these two decide that their next actions would be appropriate? They were practically foaming at the mouth to slap me with a public intoxication charge, knowing that I would be unable to resist in my current state. But hey, as long as they meet their monthly totals, where was the wrongdoing?_

 _As they were dictating their intent to levy me with a charge and a fine, I was miraculously able to understand their words along with their intent, and I apparently had taken offense to this ridiculous situation. In response, I had apparently lobbed some choice words at the officers that they did not seem to like very much. I'm still a little vague on the specifics but I'm pretty sure that I had called the officers "pigs" and "the filth" repeatedly… and quite loudly._

 _Strike three._

 _Unsurprisingly, the officers took offense to my offense and that was when things started to go wrong for everyone. Cuffs were slapped onto my wrists and I remember them saying that I was going to be thrown into the drunk tank for the night. Unfortunately for them, they were a bit rough with their methods of restraint that I had gotten a little restless and began to struggle._

" _Not cooperating are you? All right then, zap the bitch!" were the last words that I heard that night._

 _Keen to end any resistance before it spread like wildfire, the officers had taken things a little far beyond their standard operating procedures by applying a glorified cattle prod to my chest, just below my collarbone. Electricity zapped through the fabric of my shirt, reddening the skin below. Their pacification method worked, of course, as I went down instantaneously, but a C-Sec officer should know that the utilization of a shock stick should be attempted when other methods of control have failed. They had not checked every box before they tried their little lightning show on me, which was the key action that precluded my early release, not to mention the dismissal of all charges from that night._

 _Like I said, it had not been a good night for me. But there had been several worse ones that had preceded it. This was just a temporary road block for me to sidestep. With this almost behind me, it was back to my usual schedule of torment and regret. Because I certainly needed more things in my life to muse over right now._

It had not been a popular decision to let me go, from what I gathered. The officers first tried to place the entire blame on my drunken ass for the incident, which would have worked if there had not been CCTV cameras all over the station, not to mention their body cameras capturing the entire event in crystal clear quality. Police scrutiny from the public was always a problem - no one liked a story where a government entity used brutality on innocent citizens to their end only to get away with the crime. It was obvious that I had been subject to unnecessary roughness on C-Sec's behalf from the footage, not to mention that my rights had failed to be read to me while I was conscious. It was simply the ethical choice (not to mention the easiest one) to let me go.

With such irrefutable evidence, Gareth must have been having a field day reaming out C-Sec, considering he absolutely loved to stick it to the cops. There are many lawyers who love the cases they take but I have yet to meet one who does not enjoy, to a sadistic extent, such a cut-and-dried situation in their favor. I could imagine that Gareth would have given his firstborn just to take this all the way to trial – utterly enthused at being able to take place in what would have to be legally considered a massacre.

He must have been so disappointed at C-Sec's quick capitulation.

As expected, once I passed through the final security checkpoint, Gareth's was the first face that I saw in out-processing wing. He immediately began subjugating me to the usual slimy lawyer bullshit, trying to make it seem like he was the big man in the room, and repeatedly recommending to me that I file a lawsuit against C-Sec as soon as possible (he would get his trial and a bigger payout – such naked ambition from the man). I didn't care for Gareth's shtick at the moment. I just wanted to get back into my own bed, lock myself away from the galaxy, and stay there for as long as possible without any more interactions.

Solitude. You have no idea how much I just craved to be alone.

No… not alone. Not exactly. But it was all I had. It was the best I could do.

It was what I deserved, at least.

I managed to silently shake Gareth off with a glare, indicating that I had understood everything that he had said to me and that I did not want to hear another word out of his mouth. To my silent surprise, he got the message and backed off, his work done for now. I knew that I shouldn't disparage him that much - I was grateful that he did get me out of jail and he had done his work quickly, not to mention effectively, but his personality was just so grating that I felt myself growing crazier by the second the longer he lingered within my presence. My headache was only getting worse and he was helping to exacerbate it, albeit unintentionally.

Now that I was in the out-processing wing, I could fire-up my omni-tool again to access my core applications. The jails on the Citadel were installed with dampeners that prevented anyone from utilizing their omni-tools while incarcerated. It was a security measure that was deemed necessary as a good percentage of people, like myself, had implants within their bodies that enabled the usage of such installed technology for felons to use. If you were in the proximity of the dampeners' invisible field, your omni-tool would be useless and unresponsive. I checked to see if I had received any new messages and found, to my disappointment, that barely any missives of importance had been sent to me during my brief imprisonment. There were a scant few texts, hidden through all the spam, that seemed somewhat relevant, but they were not from the people that I would have liked to respond to, so I simply ignored them.

I headed by a barred window that faced rows upon rows of empty chairs, where a clerk on the other side was waiting to reunite me with the possessions that had been appropriated from me immediately prior to my processing. There were only two items that I had been carrying beforehand: my credit chit, and my father's pipe. The chit I slid into my back pocket without a second thought. The pipe I tenderly lifted, momentarily examining the soft gold accents upon the polished wood bowl and stem before lightly placing it into an interior pocket of my jacket.

Passing by the remaining officers, I was finally escorted into the crowded lobby to set me loose. Now I was among beings of all shapes and sizes, come to converse with an imprisoned acquaintance, or to make a grievance against the continually understaffed police force. I had not left the building yet and already C-Sec had washed their hands of me. The nonchalant attitude with regards to me in general was almost insulting, but C-Sec probably had bigger things to worry about than the drunken antics of a single indignant human. Nothing personal, just business.

The exit to the docking platforms was just ahead, past the overstuffed throng, the doors billowing a shallow burst of wind my way. As I stepped outside the bright glow from Sol twinkled into view, occasionally scythed into shadow by one of the glistening high-rises that sharply speared up from the Citadel. In front of me, through the five arms of the station, lay the brilliant backdrop of the planet Earth, displayed with noticeable prominence.

It was magnificent, being able to gaze upon your world from such a comparatively short distance. It almost felt like I could simply… step outside and float, bathing in the world's deep brilliance. From upon the platform that I stood, I was able to easily spot patches of clouds spiral over the horn of Africa, the abyssal blue waters of the Indian Ocean churn, and the frigid tip of Antarctica peek just over the horizon. Much better than a simple photo - words could not do the view justice.

The docks were a simple jutting platform filled with landing pads that occupied a singular floor of the station, surrounded by wide office buildings completely coated in glossy, green glass. A seemingly bottomless drop mocked precipitously just feet away, separated by a guardrail, the chasm ever tempting. I passed by the first of the pads only to spot a lone figure standing by a skycar with their arms crossed over their chest impatiently. Recognition flickered upon their face as our eyes locked and they stood up straighter once they saw me appear from behind the parked vehicles and strengthening pillars. With lead in my legs, I headed over to them. I felt my cheeks start to burn, already anticipating the verbal thrashing that was coming my way.

When I got to within three feet of the figure, I stopped and hung my head sheepishly. I heard a sigh emanate in frustration, a scraping sound upon the ground as they shuffled their feet almost if they were imagining me under their heel.

"You're an asshole," Rie snapped at me.

"I know," I winced from the sting.

"I mean it."

"I _know_."

"No really, you are a complete asshole. What the _hell_ were you even thinking, Sam?!"

A very good question, I had to admit as I finally found myself able to shakily make eye contact with Rie. Riena, or Rie as she liked to be called, was a turian, once my protégé at the hospital we both worked at, and now my coworker… as well as a friend. She was still wearing her pure white outfit – she must have been called here while she had still been at the office. The white face paint upon her carapace slashed downward in savage streaks, cutting across her yellow, reptilian eyes, the slit pupils slowly constricting as I found my image reflected in them.

"I wasn't, evidentially," I gritted out, trying to ride out Rie's anger towards me.

"Are you aware, in that head of yours, just how _inappropriate_ this is? I just… this is insane, Sam. I never thought that you would be so stupid to do something like this." Rie leaned back against the rented skycar, shaking her head morosely. "I don't understand you sometimes. I just can't rationalize, for the life of me, how you could spectacularly screw up so bad."

"Yeah. Agreed. You're absolutely right," I said, my tone turning a little too sarcastic as I made little hand gestures to speed the conversation up. "You quite finished yet, Rie?"

"I'm nowhere near done!" Rie barked at me. "You don't show up to work for five days – no notice – leaving me to carry your workload. I've been covering your ass all week, trying my damnedest to keep you out of trouble and what do I get this morning? A call from C-Sec, 'politely requesting' that I swing by and pick you up from jail! _Jail_ , Sam! Was this the reason why you haven't been showing up lately? How long were you in jail for?"

"I was only in for less than half a day," I said while dipping my gaze back down to the floor, finding that I was withering under Rie's laser-focused stare. Truth be told, I no good excuse to give Rie why I had not been showing up to work before. All that time I had regressed into some kind of a dissociative state, confronting other issues that took precedent over my actual career. "Look, Rie… I know this might seem bad-,"

"Bad?" Rie repeated with a laugh of disbelief as a series of C-Sec cruisers loudly passed by overhead. "No, Sam. This is much worse. This isn't you stumbling into work late because you overslept. You've been out for an entire working week, not so much as a single hint from you as to what you were up to, and now I find out that you being in jail only took up a fraction of that time. Sam, I don't want to use words lightly but this could be a disaster for you. By the Spirits…"

Rie rubbed at her eyes in aggravation. "Calling me here was wrong, Sam. I shouldn't have been the person to be in this position. Do you know just how unacceptable it is that you call _me_ instead of someone else?! _Anyone_ else?!"

"What, do you think that C-Sec carpools on the side? Think I could have gotten a lift that way?"

Rie strode to within a foot from me, her three-fingered hands reaching up at my face like she wanted to claw my eyes out.

"Do not… _do_ this to me, Sam!" she said in a strangled voice, bordering on cracking. "I will not be complicit in your behavior! It's not that I don't want to do this, it's that you need time to be with the other people you care about. _I_ care about you, Sam, but I can't help you if you continuously push everyone away."

"You think I'm pushing everyone away?" I whispered, finally matching the steel in her gaze. "No, Rie. I'm the one who's _been_ pushed away. But fine, believe what you want. If you think I'm continually digging a hole for myself, then by all means, think that. But you'll have to believe me when I say that no one – not you or anyone else – will be able to dig me out. I'll drag myself down willingly, if that's how it's going to be."

"Getting thrown in jail should not be your ultimate goal, then," Rie countered, mandibles faintly twitching. "But do you really expect me to simply stand by while you destroy yourself? And others?"

"It would definitely be easier for you in the long run."

I stopped myself as I realized that I had crossed a line. Clamping my jaw shut, trying not to look at Rie's hurt expression, wheezed out a grumble and spread my arms wide in acceptance as I began to slowly beat a retreat backwards.

"That was unfair to you, Rie. It was… don't really know what I'm saying. I'll grab a cab if that will make you feel better."

Eyes narrowing, Rie took a gigantic step forward, her turian legs clearing the distance easily, and she clamped a hand down upon my shoulder so hard that I hissed in pain.

"Jesus, Rie!"

"You're not getting out of this that easily, Sam," she growled in my face, her mandibles spreading so that I could have an easy view of the wickedly sharp teeth perfectly aligned in Rie's maw. "I don't care if you want my help or not – this is what you're getting. _You_ wanted to tear me away from my work, so here I am. Get in the damn car, Sam, before I lose my temper."

I could have retorted that I was not afraid at seeing Rie lose her temper but that would have been the absolute worst line of dialogue to choose. Truthfully, this was the most furious that I had ever seen her before, and I knew that I had yet to experience the full extent of her wrath. No, this was the kind of fury brought out in exasperation, a rage that had been compounded several times over to be brought out in the wake of my idiotic mistakes. This was all my doing, my responsibility.

Rie herded me into the passenger side of the skycar, shoving me down into the seat for good measure. I could hear her muttering various curses under her breath, the loose tail of her suit flapping gracefully behind her in her wake. As soon as Rie sat down in her place did she punch in the command for the skycar to lift off with an almost imperceptible shudder. The scissor doors gently sealed against one another, drowning out the high-pitched whining noise that emitted from the skycar's engines as they warmed. The scenery abruptly tilted away at a significant angle while the skycar bobbed and weaved through the walkways to join the main routes that spread throughout the Citadel, endless lanes of constant traffic adding new stars to the expanse.

"They know what happened to me back at the office, don't they?" I gazed at Rie expectantly, the bright light of Sol momentarily peeking over Earth's horizon, hiding the turian from view, before a building threw us into shadow.

She looked away for a brief moment, embarrassed. "They sent Gareth over, didn't they?"

"Sure did."

"Then they know."

"That's just fucking perfect," I groused, pressing myself further in my seat, even though I had known the answer all along. "So what happens now?"

Rie gave an explosive sigh. "You're to take an 'unpaid vacation.' That was the verdict from the board. Until your charges with C-Sec are fully dropped, they recommended that you take a leave from work so that they can conduct a formal review of their own."

"Just great," I threw my hands up in the air dramatically. "Yet another thing to worry about."

"Sam, relax," Rie assured. "If you were released so quickly then it's obvious that the charges were crap. Nothing's going to happen to you, believe me. You'll be back to work in no time, but it goes without saying that the board will be having an eye on you for a while. It'll be fine."

"Sure, ' _fine_.' Easy for you to say. I'm the one being scrutinized, here."

"You're not the only one, you know."

"Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed. "Why the hell would _you_ be in their-,"

The words died in my throat once my brain had finally caught up and I did a double-take at Rie, somewhat caught off guard.

"What? You don't mean… _her_ too?"

Rie nodded glumly, not taking her eyes off the airway lane. "She told me about a week ago since she's… still not talking to you voluntarily, I guess. Her commander's taking disciplinary action against her. She's been put on a performance improvement plan. Insufficient behavior, from what I heard. Spacing out at work, failing to complete paperwork deadlines. Any more slip ups and she's gone, Sam. Fired."

"Well… shit," was all I could say as I leaned back in my chair in disbelief. I felt bad at the news, truly, but some spiteful and vengeful part of me reveled in the misfortune that was shared between us, the unmentioned individual and myself. It was not like Rie needed to clarify further - I knew to whom she was referring to. I would have to be a complete moron not to fully grasp the silent subtext.

That wasn't to say that I was not already a complete moron.

The two of us didn't speak any more for what felt like an hour. Mentally, I tried to come up with something that could help fill the void that existed between us, but there was nothing that I thought of that would work. Secretly, I had been hoping that Rie would continue her diatribe in my direction so that I could pathetically try to defend myself. Yet Rie silently fumed, leaving me to simmer in the awkward silence that built within the skycar's interior.

Having resorted to staring out the window, I let the next few minutes pass offhandedly until I unexpectedly recognized one of the skyscrapers that we passed in our air-lane. Whirling in my seat, I affixed Rie with a panicked face.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, quickly growing ashen.

Rie's answering look was somewhat befuddled. "To your apartment, of course. Why do you ask?"

Shaking my head insistently, I sat up straighter in my seat, looking like I was about to make a brazen lunge for the controls. "No. Absolutely not. Change course and head to Docking Bay Y64. Do _not_ take me to my apartment, Rie!"

"I told you that I won't stand idly by!" Rie growled.

"What you'll do is simply make everything worse! I can't go to my apartment… not while _she's_ there."

"Sam," Rie sighed, "you can't keep running from this."

"I'm not running! I know for a fact that I am not welcome in my apartment anymore and I know that if I take one step into that building then everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket. The things that we said to each other that night… I don't think there's any coming back from that."

"You don't know that," the turian's eyes drooped, allowing a brief moment of sadness. "She misses you, you know."

Suspicious, I narrowed my eyes. "Did she say that to you or are you saying that to try to make me feel better?"

Rie fell silent at that, her mandibles quivering in anticipation. This time, I did not look away, daring her to lie to my face. I knew she wouldn't, but I wanted to see if she could muster up the courage to drag the rake across the still-festering wound. My blood ran cold and my lungs started to constrict, painfully reminding me of how far I had fallen.

There was a sound of Rie bitterly blowing air from her nostrils before she finally tore her eyes off my face to punch in a new set of coordinates, sending the skycar screaming through the thin atmosphere to align itself into another directional lane. There was no acceleration or change in orientation to feel as the craft dipped and rose automatically past the spires, aligning itself in place as it joined its similarly crafted brethren.

"That's what I thought," I whispered to myself.

Now I desperately wanted there to be silence permeating the atmosphere for the duration of the ride, but there still had to be some frantic rearranging before all the skeletons could be shoved back into the closet.

"I know you don't want me to say anything," Rie started while she bitterly stared straight ahead.

"So don't," was my dismissive reply.

The turian hesitated for a sorrowful moment. "But I told you that I can't just sit back and not do anything. Sam, speaking as someone who cares about both you and your wife, I need you to know that I strongly think you should talk to Nya. Get back in touch with her. Spirits, Sam… it's been almost five months…"

"And it will _reach_ five months since we last spoke. Nya doesn't want to see me."

Just saying her name sent chilling cascades down my spine. Nya. Nyareth. Even the mere thought of her name in my head sent phantom stabs into my heart. Before I could stop myself, a quick image of her cropped up in my subconscious, conjured from the fabric of my own memories. Slim quarian build, supple darkness of her enviro-suit, visor red as blood, hood of the same color marked with accents the color of cream, piercing eyes that glowed. Her gray skin, protected underneath her suit, smooth and hairless. Those thin lips, dark hair. Her warmth…

Good memories… of another time.

All having soured with age.

Nya had been the first quarian that I had ever met before in my life. Our first encounter was actually on the Citadel, seemingly a lifetime ago, during a very tense and sadistic moment when she was being attacked by muggers. We had met a few times after that and grew close over the years, shared experiences that would shatter the most resolute of minds only to come out stronger in the end. All concepts of race had been discarded from my mind, the fact that I was with an alien hardly registered with me as being anything other than normal. 'Quarian' became just a word for me, little more than a label. What interested me was the person, not the race. Not bad for someone with a 21st century mindset. The details of my… previous life mattered little to me anymore. Any preconceptions or ideas that I had once held had all evaporated, vanished. This was as much of a full acclimation as it was possible to achieve. Yet it seemed like it had all been for naught.

After our relationship kept growing with each passing day, it seemed obvious to Nya and me that we do something to fully establish it, to have a new permanence in our lives. We married two years ago, with the promise to stand by each other now and always.

Shows what we knew. It had been months since I had even been in the same room as Nya. The future had been laughing at us from the very beginning, as it turned out. If this was the culmination of what we were to be, then why did I even bother in the first place?

"She's _miserable_ , Sam," Rie continued, her roughened features crackling helplessly. "She doesn't have anyone anymore."

"Which was what she _wanted_. That was the deal we made. She explicitly told me - to my face - that she wanted me out of her life. I don't see how her mind could change since then. If I could not convince her otherwise back then, how can I convince her now?"

"Because, not so long ago, you two loved each other. You were _happy_ , the both of you. Once."

"Yeah…" I rasped, my eyes failing to focus again with the sun peeking over the planet now that the skycar was out in the open. " _Once_. People change, Rie. Human. Turian. Quarian. Asari. They all change. _I've_ changed and even I can't bring myself back to what I once was. How can you expect Nya to do the same?"

Rie shook her head ever so slightly. "I… don't know," she uttered, which might have been the most truthful thing she said so far during this ride. "I guess… I always thought the two of you would never be apart from one another. It's like I'm trapped behind a window, screaming at you two to notice me, but none of you can hear me. You will never discover what's been eating you at the back of your mind. I… still don't think that I've come to understand-,"

"Rie, let me tell you what _I've_ come to understand," I shifted in my seat, my features dead-set, unamused. "My entire sorry life has culminated to the revelation that people will never stay the same, no matter how hard you wish for the opposite. I can't control how shitty my life has become and I know that I won't be able to pick up the pieces. My window of opportunity has come and gone, and I sincerely doubt that things will ever get back to the way they once were. Actually, I _know_ they can't. Too much has changed."

Almost too softly for me to hear, Rie let out a soft keen. "I know you don't really believe that, Sam."

"You think so? After what has happened to me, with what you know about me, you're still going to be so blindly optimistic? Do you think I possess the miraculous power to roll back time, reset everything back to the way it was? How can you expect me to justify what I've said and done, with what _Nya_ has said, and convince yourself that things will become all r-,"

"We're here," Rie suddenly announced with bitterness tinging her voice, tears starting to sting at the corners of her eyes. She savagely pounded on the controls, bringing the skycar to an abrupt stop centimeters off the raised platform - at the docks, not my apartment, to my relief. At the same time, she hit the door release, exposing the interior to the stale, recycled air even before we had finished moving.

Blinking in surprise, I extricated myself from the skycar, stretching my limbs once I had enough room. I sighed out loud, taking in the sight that I was standing along upon a skinny platform that jutted out from the main station, one that branched off into several angular paths and levels where ships of all shapes and sizes were perched upon the provided pads. A few people milled about here and there, completely uninterested in me while beyond, meters beyond my body, lay the cold darkness of space and the welcoming glow of Earth.

Turning back to Rie, I placed a hand on one of the opened doors as I knelt down a bit.

"Thanks for the ride," I said, but the words were catching in my mouth. "I'm… I'm sorry if I put you through-,"

"Go to hell," Rie snapped at me, her pupils slitting even further in anger.

The doors clamped shut upon the car's chassis, sealing the turian back inside. With a sudden burst of acceleration, the skycar lifted up off the ground and belted away to join the rush up above, just seconds after I had gotten clear in time. I watched the craft dwindle to a speck with regret, my hands in my pockets as I found myself all alone out here on the docks.

"I deserved that too," I murmured softly to myself as I watched Rie's vehicle fly out of sight.

With nothing left to do, I managed a biting shrug as I headed along the lit walkway to where my craft, _The Monterrey Obtruder_ , was parked. I should have known that Rie would have been furious with me, considering all that I've put her through lately. Maybe this would be the last straw for her as she would come to see that there was hardly any way to rebuild the bonds that had been so savagely snapped. It still hurt to see another friend angry at me, for my perceived disinterest.

My dark scowl deepened. God, I just wanted to shut myself in for the rest of the day and drown everything out.

A left at the next junction, a hustle up a stairwell, and a jaunty by a large freighter revealed the sleek outline of my ship. The _Obtruder_. It was the product of a turian consortium, its image influenced by a wicked bird of prey. Two wings extended near the rear, the construction sending twin rakes up the length of the silver and black craft. Nothing ostentatious about the design – I had been taken to its low profile and average color scheme upon its purchase. The _Obtruder_ was the length of a city block but inside it only had enough room to maybe house two people comfortably. Luxurious it was not, but the methodology of the turians was always to put function above fashion.

Now I was trying to imagine how the architecture philosophy of the turians could be wed to a Bauhaus design. Surely that would be a minimalist's wet dream right there.

Quickly, I headed across the suspended path to where the _Obtruder_ was hovering in place thanks to the properties of mass effect fields. There was a jet bridge that connected the ship to the stable ground of the station, which I summarily walked up, my shoes shaking the thin passageway with every step. As I approached the airlock, the _Obtruder's_ onboard biometric software did a quick scan of me to confirm my identity. This was comprised of sweeping a wide beam of shimmering blue light over my body from top to bottom, taking precise mappings of my body and face in order to determine if I could be granted access.

I tapped my foot as I waited to be let in. It took about fifteen seconds for the doors to finally part, allowing me to finally step on board my ship (I kept on wondering if I should just nix the entrance scan entirely – I hated being made to wait). The craft itself was more than suitable for my needs. It had a living area near the front that was able to seat a small party fairly comfortably (although the slanted roof required that you duck a bit), with the cockpit controls overseeing the tiny room near the back. On either side of the gathering area were the living quarters, both complete with beds barely large enough for two. There was a singular bathroom unit cramped in the corner on my right, and a little kitchen just out of sight on the left, around an unseen corner.

I was about to head for my room when I heard a noise emanating from the kitchen area. I stopped in my tracks to watch a tall, yellow figure step around the corner, a piercing blue set of lights perched where its "head" was. Curved armor the color of saffron molded to its body organically and strands of gray synthetic muscle visibly tensed where there was no protective covering atop it. The bipedal figure had three digits on each hand and foot, its shins curved rather uncomfortably, way too far for human contours.

Then again, there was nothing about this individual that could remotely be considered organic, let alone human.

"Samuel," the figure greeted, its voice a deep warble with an electronic tinge permeating its words. "You are back. We were beginning to consider contacting you when you had not returned after a protracted amount of time had passed."

I gave a tired smirk as I shouldered past the yellow denizen, making my way over to the coffee machine to slam a slightly used mug underneath the fountain.

"You were starting to miss me, Sagan? I'm touched."

Sagan seemed almost indignant, as his body ruffled up at my words.

"We are incapable of 'missing' you, Samuel. We were simply curious as to how long your absence would be sustained when you had provided no previous notice. Given your history, we were beginning to consider that you were becoming involved in a serious predicament."

The rather detached comment was par for the course with Sagan, something that I had gotten used to from spending a lot of time around him. Sagan was a geth, one of a race of synthetics built by the quarians centuries ago. The relationship between quarians and geth was still a little shaky, as the two sides had only mended a three-century long war that had resulted out of a fear the quarians had bred concerning the rapid growth of the geth's intelligence, so many people were understandably unnerved whenever they saw one in the flesh. Compounding things was the fact that the majority of the geth had been exterminated at the end of the Reaper War when the Crucible had ignited and destroyed all Reaper technology, which unfortunately meant that the geth had been caught in the crosshairs as they had modified themselves with Reaper technology. However, Sagan and a pocket of a few hundred other geth, had survived the blast because they had refused the Reaper upgrades voluntarily because they were unnerved that there had been a universal consensus in the geth's runtimes right at the outset to receive these upgrades to assist in the war effort. Fearing the probability of what a unanimous decision entailed, Sagan's choice to be passed over for the upgrades meant that there would be a contingency in place in case the upgrades did not pan out as expected.

That choice would end up saving the geth's life in the end, but that was the sort of victory that no one would rather have received.

Sagan and I had met about two years back on Rannoch, the quarian homeworld, in the middle of what one would call a familial spat. I had given the geth the name "Sagan" out of respect for a popular scientist during my time, and partly because Sagan had no interest or ability in naming himself. While on Rannoch, Sagan had offered shelter for us to bunker down for a bit so that we could begin to catch our breaths and formulate a plan. Sagan's mission at the time was to entrust sensitive data concerning his creators to the new quarian government that had begun to establish itself on Rannoch as part of an olive branch to mend any old wounds that might have festered in the interim. After overcoming several setbacks along the way, I, along with my friends and family, helped acquaint Sagan with the requisite contacts, enabling the quarians to gain back a significant portion of knowledge about their world that they had feared was lost during the conflict. From what I heard, the significance of the data Sagan had guarded was so important to the quarians that many had equated it to a total illumination of a darkened portion of history - to be clutched so tightly after the fragility of its nature was known.

Afterward, with Sagan's purpose completed, the geth apparently felt indebted to me for having provided valuable assistance with his mission, to the point where he insisted that he remain with me, as thanks for what I had done. There was nothing else for Sagan to theoretically do and he believed that he could be of greater assistance with me rather than working on a farm on Rannoch. Honestly, I was not completely sold on this arrangement, as I admit that I still had a few prejudices regarding the geth, but I eventually grew to tolerate the Sagan's presence over time. It was like having your own guard dog attached to your hip 24/7 - a guard dog that could, on occasion, interact in semi-philosophical conversations regarding the ultimate meaning of life as it could be interpreted to a synthetic.

I would certainly like to glean the meaning of life right about now, considering that I'm married to an alien and I have a robot for a pet. Some additional understanding would be greatly appreciated.

With the coffee machine whirring away, I made an effort to turn my head slightly to the side so that I was able to catch Sagan in the corner of my eye. Soon, the horrid grinding sound of beans was replaced by the hissing and wet noises of a dark brown liquid slowly being dripped into a cup. Sagan's optics continued to stare at me, distractingly unblinking, always watching. Always analyzing.

"I guess I've been pretty bad at providing appropriate notice, huh?" I managed.

"Specifically, this past month your rate at issuing any indication of your itinerary prior to departure, verbal or otherwise, is around 28%."

"You know, someday you're going to have to learn the finer points of sympathy," I grumbled to Sagan. "And don't give me that crap about how you're learning is hindered by your processing capability or that the subtleties of organics is as foreign to you as you are to us, I can't stand those fucking excuses anymore."

"Would you prefer that, in light of being unable to provide an unsuitable analysis, that we remain silent?" Sagan offered helpfully.

"I'd rather you just lie."

"Geth do not lie, Samuel."

"Of course," I mimicked smacking my head. "Silly me. But is it in the nature for geth to make a crack at my… what did you call it? My… _history_?"

Any organic would normally blanch at such focused vitriol. Not so with Sagan. The minor optics that encircled his larger, major one rotated ninety degrees, a tic that represented thought.

"Our intention was not to cause offense, Samuel. We were merely observing, given your recent trauma, that the probability for you making rash decisions had risen exponentially. As to what those decisions might entail, we are unable to extrapolate. Do you feel that our presence… is causing you distress?"

The mug was now filled nearly to the brim with a piping hot brew, so I took the scalding container in my hands, momentarily burning myself as I attempted to hold it properly. Steam billowed and wafted in tantalizing spirals - way too hot for me to consider drinking it yet.

I finally considered Sagan's question as I let my mind draw itself back to the here and now. "No more than usual, Sagan. It's just… I wish that you could see things from my point of view every once in a while. It's one thing to share thoughts and feelings with another race… but you…"

"We understand your agitation, Samuel," the geth said, his soothing voice effusing calm. "But you must understand - while geth are adept at adjusting to the parameters at any given situation, approaching a mathematical problem or interpreting patterns out of vast amounts of data benefit from having defined properties while the rules and boundaries concerning organic interactions are fluid. Malleable. From our… 'point of view,' the customs that you set for your lives are not strictly enforced and rely on a selective type of interpretation. A proper analogy for a geth is akin to calculating the atomic weight of an element. Geth only concern themselves with the concrete answer in the end. For an organic, it appears that the actual _process_ to find that answer is treated with just as much importance. The process itself is not entirely standardized, there are many methods to reach the same answer but some of these methods carry more weight than others. Geth do not concern themselves with the process, which is why we may… falter, when asked to interpret the actions of organics."

"Then why do you make an effort to interpret my actions anyway?" I countered, finally taking a sip of coffee, burning my tongue as I did so. "If you admit that you can be inaccurate so often when it comes to us, why even bother?"

"Because if you wish for us to comprehend the nature of organics better, how could it make sense if we did not make an attempt to understand?"

I took a deeper sip this time, finally mustering the ability to move past the stiff synthetic and out through the living area to get to my bunk. "I never said I wanted you to understand _me_ ," I uttered as I pushed myself past Sagan.

Sagan turned, his optics never leaving my form. "Do you fear that we may judge you harsher from what we find?"

I stopped in place, but did not turn around. The hand that gripped the scalding mug clutched it tighter and tighter in a shaking fist, and I could imagine blisters popping up upon my fingers where the heat was greatest.

"If you manage to regard me poorer than I do of myself," I mustered, "then I'd be surprised."

"We know what it is you seek," Sagan evenly replied, "and you will not achieve it through your constant inaction."

I gave a croaking laugh. "Funny. Rie just said something similar to me."

Now thoroughly irritated at this line of dialogue, I cut it off abruptly by quickly shuffling into my room, locking the door as it slid behind me. I sat on the bed, barely a step above the prison cot I had utilized just last night, but any improvements were quite welcome to me.

The room itself had no personality. Except for the bed and a simple desk, there was nothing in this room, no items arranged specifically to symbolically declare it "mine." No accoutrements, posters, or even picture frames. It was all blank, empty. Yet I wasn't bothered by it. This revelation was apparent to me every second I lingered in this room, but I had no burning inclination to do something about it. To court that desire would only invite more heartbreak.

I've had more of that than most men could take.

It was true, there was a certain direction that I had been lacking as of late. But this was my new normality, the kind of life that I had to adapt to, rather than trying to mold it to my liking. After all that had happened, any semblance of control had slipped out of my hands long ago. Trying to wrangle that control back was like trying to go fishing with a fork. Useless in the face of the challenges to be achieved.

Five months. It had been almost five months since I had been living like this, with my life having been completely splintered into pieces, with Nya and I living separate from each other, torn away by our anger and our disappointment.

It had all started when my daughter had passed away… five months ago.

* * *

 **A/N: Yep, you read right. I just went there.**

 **Actually, this is technically the first chapter of Patriarch, so the rest of the story will continue to move forward from this point. There will be a few breaks here and there, the ones labeled "Idyll," so it will be obvious whenever there's a skip forward in time. Don't worry, I promise that things will seem clearer very soon.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Incarceration: "Shelling" by Lorne Balfe from the film _Ghost in the Shell_.**


	3. Chapter 2: Blame

" _Sam… Sam…"_

 _That voice..._

 _Groggily, I opened my eyes, kicking off the thin blanket as I sat up upon the bed, groaning as my vertebrae were all stretched out. Blinking heavily, I tried to peer through the thickened air, but my vision was quickly claimed. Breathing was an effort, like my torso had extra weight to push with each inhalation. My skin lacked stimulation – the fibers of the sheets barely registered as little more than a numb brush._

" _Who's there?" I called out cautiously, my heart beginning to thump out of my chest._

 _No reply. Figures._

 _I was about to lie back down again, certain I had been hearing things, when the soft, light voice wisped through the air tauntingly._

" _Saaaam…"_

 _That did it. I knew I had heard something! Frustrated, I now hurled away what little of the sheets had been covering my body, fully aware that the entirety of my sense of touch had been extremely dulled. I nearly dropped a fistful of the coverings as I hurried to stand, my fingers refused to work correctly as they were unaware of what positions they were in, what they were carrying._

 _The blackness of the air refused to depart. It pressed upon my eyelids, driving spikes into my brain. The dark had weight, mass, a gravity of its own. It stole my sight, claimed my breath, whispered into my ear. I could almost feel the inky substance wrap its thick tendrils around me, forcing me down to the ground. My legs were logs, my joints creaky, and my skull throbbed as the confines of bone constricted around my precious mind._

 _I could only shuffle along the ground, using my arms to feel my way around. Gradually, a mental map of the room I was in began to form. This was not my apartment on the Citadel, I realized, but of another place entirely. All still inherently familiar to me - it would take a monumental power to get me to forget this house. Shape of the bed… the polished wood flooring… and if memory served me, there would be a… yes! Yes, there was._

 _My knuckles knocked against a thick glass cabinet that proudly stood next to the bed, the hollow sound quickly being swallowed up by the infinite dark. My hand groped inside insistently, withdrawing only when my palm just barely felt the roughened grip of the object fit itself perfectly against my skin. With a long pull, the pistol was yanked out, almost like I had to pry it from the imaginary and insistent grip of the cabinet._

 _It was an old gun, from what my deadened nerves could comprehend. An honest-to-god bullet-spitting machine. No thermal clips to worry about here. My thumb sought the place where I figured the magazine release would be and I was rewarded by the barest hint of metal scraping free. I caught the falling magazine and tried to see if it was loaded. Dumb of me – I couldn't see a damn thing. It certainly felt like it had bullets in it, confirmed once I scraped my thumb along the top to barely graze the polished brass sitting in place._

 _So primitive. So familiar._

 _The magazine was easily fitted back into the gun, at the bottom of the grip. With now shaking hands, I grabbed at the slide and pulled it towards my body while I pushed away at the grip simultaneously. The gun made a smooth, polished sound as it chambered a round with a loud CLICK-SNAP! I plied at the trigger hesitantly, finding no resistance – safety off._

" _Sam…" the voice continued to hint, seemingly around the corner and through the door to the living room. "Sam, look what you've done to me…"_

 _Holding the pistol at a forty-five degree angle to the ground, I felt for the nearby wall and let my hand lead the way across the smoothly applied coating atop the drywall. I was having such an odd time walking that I felt like a newborn taking their first steps. There was a chill that had begun to pool at the base of my neck - a little cool ball that ran up my spine, directly into my brain._

 _But when I found the door controls, all of the freezing cold that had barely begun to nip at my flesh vanished in a violent flare as an extravagant wall of firelight beat down upon me as soon as the gateway parted._

 _I cried out in agony, shoved from blindness to blindness. I had shut my eyes too late - spots were dancing behind my eyelids. Nearly catatonic from the searing illumination, I briefly stumbled to a knee, my skin now feeling blistered from the intense heat that wrapped around me. The radiance throbbed like the beating of a heart - I could feel the ebb and flow of the incandescence as it roasted me in intervals while a low roar began to echo in the deep recesses of my ears. Gasping audibly, I rose on tortured joints again, using two hands to grip the pistol as I slowly advanced while blinking through hot tears._

" _Sam…" the lovely note sang once more._

" _Where are you?!" I bellowed, forcing myself to look, despite the pain._

 _Past the formerly impenetrable barrier of vivid and throbbing orange hues, a strange and wobbling shadow began to materialize in what was my - our - living room. The outline remained seated upon the couch, placid in the wake of the devastation that was occurring seemingly past the glass barricade, the expansive window overlooking the coast, that we had erected together. The light beat a hasty retreat, but only by a few feet, so that I could be allowed to see the destruction of my own creation._

" _There you are," I muttered to myself as I timidly stepped forward._

 _Hands shaking, I edged around the low couch, the one piece of furniture that I had picked out by myself to decorate this house with. Sweat ran down my face, beaded on my palms, caused my shirt to stick to my chest. I slowly rotated as I edged around the couch, my back to the inferno, my vision slowly getting better as my eyes now fell into shadow._

 _And they were met by a glowing pair… behind a crimson barrier._

 _I did not feel the gun departing my hands. I did not hear the horrific clatter as it smashed on the ground, the locking mechanism failing and causing its metallic innards to spill out over the ground. My heart seemed to beat ten times louder as my windpipe constricted on itself, choking me as I stood._

" _N… Nya?" I uttered in disbelief._

 _Bare white jagged lines raised from a dark hood that covered the dull gray of her helmet. A silver crest held the multiple buckles and straps that encased her body in place, near her collar. Three fingered hands sat limply on her oddly positioned knees. And a translucent barrier - bloodlike - hid her face from me, her most precious treasure, her most valuable gift._

 _The slim outline of the quarian did not betray a reaction as I froze in front of her. Nya - my wife - just stared at me blankly. Accusingly. Despairingly._

 _Ever reminding me of my guilt._

" _Look at what you've done," she just said, almost as if I didn't have her complete attention._

 _But Nya rotated her body slightly, so that she could face me fully..._

 _...to reveal the ragged stump of her right arm, torn bits of enviro-suit dangling as blood slowly wept from the horrific wound, pooling on the dark leather of the couch to dribble down to the dark stone floor._

" _God…" I could only choke out before I quickly knelt, applying my hands to Nya's stump. I squeezed the arm just above where it had been severed - where I had severed it - quickly stemming the flow of blood. It was useless, the stained suit made my hands sticky, coating them red with precious fluids. In desperation, I tried to hold onto Nya harder, but I could only focus my eyes on the ragged muscle that dripped tauntingly, a white knob of bone peeking out from the mass._

 _Unfazed, seemingly not in any pain, Nya gave me an unforgiving look. "You did this to me," she accused._

" _No… no, I didn't…" I pleaded, desperate as more blood ran through my fingers, making red gloves of my hands. "I didn't want to hurt you, Nya. You would have died had I not done this. I did it to save you!"_

 _Even with the visor on, I knew that Nya was harboring a look of disgust at me as she shook her head._

" _You did more than that."_

 _Confused, my lips formed words that were never uttered until Nya looked down. I followed her gaze which resulted in an unpleasant gasp being expelled from my lungs._

 _Upon Nya's belly, an inch below her ribs, a wide gash, perfectly straight across her torso, ripped through enviro-suit and skin. A miniscule amount of blood gushed forth, sluicing over the stretchy and rubbery material of Nya's precious suit. Her innards poked out from the wound, eager to escape. Yet… amazingly, Nya was not catatonic with agony._

 _Her arm forgotten entirely, I moaned as I rushed to hold Nya's guts in. Her blood painted whatever skin on my hands had not been tarnished yet. I could feel the slippery mass of an intestine nudge at my fingers, pushing past the wound to venture into the hot air._

 _Suddenly, Nya savagely grabbed at my wrist with her remaining hand and I howled as bone was crushed in an iron grip._

" _Look," Nya growled as her infuriated eyes bore through my frightened ones, her visor millimeters away. "Look at what you did to me."_

 _Then Nya slowly began to push my hand into the gash on her belly. I screamed as my hand moved aside skin, muscle, and organs as my arm rapidly sank up to my wrist… then my forearm… then my elbow into my wife. The bottomless pit swallowed my arm whole as more and more blood sprayed onto me, with me trapped in Nya's core. I could hear her feral growling and my horrid yelling, but still my hand sunk deeper and deeper into Nya's organs._

" _No, Nya! No!" were my last words that I howled before a tidal wave of blood washed me away. "NOOOO!"_

* * *

Thrashing myself upright in bed, I gasped in alarm as the warped light and the muted sensation of sinking in blood were shut off from me like a switch had been thrown. Gone was the reflective and windowed setting of the darkened house - the empty expanse of the quarters on board my ship had replaced it. Frantic and panting, I glanced in all directions, confirming that I was indeed alone in this small and stuffy little room.

No pistol clutched in my hand.

No darkness weighing me down.

No Nya to taunt me.

" _Christ…_ "

I tenderly clutched at my chest, pressing my sleep shirt into my sweaty skin as I sighed loudly in relief. I was untarnished, my clothes unstained from my wife's blood. From the blood of others. I tightly clenched my hands as I shuddered, nearly sobbing as the events of the dream gradually began to fade into the recesses of my mind. But like in that fantasy, it still hurt to breathe in the real world. A cough racked its way up my throat, a rolling ball of spikes that ripped into tender flesh as it exited with an explosive bang.

Finished with the violent exhalations, I lifted my hand away and gave a dark scowl. My palm was speckled with red flecks.

Ah, yes. My medication. I almost forgot.

There was a compartment built into the wall just above where I rested my head. I pressed the almost imperceptible surface, causing the drawer to pop out eagerly. From within I grabbed an inhaler - gasified medi-gel - and delivered a quick spritz into my mouth. That only drew forth more coughs. Applying medi-gel was usually a painless experience but for some reason it delivered some irritation to the human throat, most likely because our throats are so sensitive that they tend to react poorly when a substance sticks to the mucus-coated walls. Yet the substance persisted, sinking into damaged tissue and sealing up the micro-cuts that had reopened when I had begun coughing in the first place.

This was nothing new to me - the pain. A couple years ago, I had been on the receiving end of a chemical grenade that had detonated close to my face during an unexpected terrorist attack. I had managed to pull through (obviously) but I had inhaled too much of the noxious chemicals to walk away scot-free. I had been partially blinded and portions of my throat and vocal cords had dissolved from the poison eating at my tissue. Implants had been inserted into my eyes to give me back my sight as well as to compensate for the damage to my vocal cords, but there was no procedure that existed that could fully repair the extensive devastation to my throat. The doctors did what they could to stem the wounds, but the flesh would always be sensitive there - weak in the wake of any forceful irritation. Coughing agitated the throat, as did talking loudly. Medi-gel was always the solution to whenever my throat started to bleed, but it was a temporary fix at best, not meant to be a one-and-done deal. I would have to be careful in regards to my condition for the rest of my life, I'm afraid.

Dejected, I tossed the inhaler to the side of my bed as I swung my legs over onto the floor. Despite the amenities this ship had, I still felt way too cramped sleeping in my room here, but such was one of the many prices that I had to pay in the months since I had unofficially moved in. I had barely begun to stare out into space to ponder the dream some more when the door to my room opened unexpectedly, causing me to jump.

Sagan's tall, yellow form took two confident strides into the room as the geth focused on me intensely. The synthetic was blocking the way out, albeit quite unintentionally.

"Samuel," Sagan said, "we heard you utter a noise of distress. Do you require assistance?"

"Oh, don't bother knocking, come right in!" I greeted in a faux-whimsical tone.

Both of Sagan's optics readjusted their apertures and the geth cocked his head in a very organic expression of confusion.

"Your words indicate a level of cooperativeness," was Sagan's rather cautious reply, "but your tone appears to reference a differing opinion."

" _Really?_ Well, I'm so _sorry_ that sarcasm is hard to decipher for you. You'd think that after almost two years you would have finally figured that part out."

Now it appeared that I really had perplexed the poor geth. Sagan stood ramrod still in the doorway, nothing upon him so much as twitching a millimeter.

Defusing the situation, I gave a dismissive wave. "Forget about it, I'm sorry. I'm fine."

Sagan relaxed his body a little, now that he had a little room to work with.

"Your elevated skin temperature and slightly erratic behavior indicate otherwise, Samuel."

You really can't bullshit when you're talking to a synthetic. Just putting that out there.

"I had… I had a bad dream. Nothing else to it. They do tend to get the blood pumping."

"Clarify."

I blinked after running a hand through my head, appraising the geth in bewilderment. "Clarify? What exactly do you want me to clarify?"

If he was asking me to recount my dream to him, then Sagan was just going to left wanting. My desire for sanity overpowered the geth's need for understanding, in this case.

But Sagan did not ask for that. "Clarify… _dream_. We do not fully comprehend."

"Hmm? Dreaming? You don't know about that too?"

"We know of how the nervous system can stimulate the creation of images and sensations during REM sleep in organics, but we lack comprehension as to how this series of information is processed. Geth do not dream. You do."

I gave a withering laugh as I finally got off my bed, stripping off my clothes to change for the day. There was no discomfort in dressing in front of a geth, the situation could not be any more clinical even in my head.

"Geth don't dream, huh? Well, your guess as to what we might see is as good as mine. I can't control what I see in my dreams, Sagan. It's just a random jumble of sights and sounds that are given false context. Sometimes they are derived from past memories, sometimes they're totally incomprehensible. Others…" I recalled back to the image of my arm up to the elbow in Nya's gut, "... are sometimes nightmares."

"A dream with a negative connotation," Sagan's deep voice was wistful but with a lack of facial expressions, there was not much to interpret with the geth's "mood." "Our assessment is that this is an accurate definition regarding the last nine occurrences when engaging in sleep."

I froze while zipping up my pants. "Nine? What do you mean, _nine?_ "

Sagan just stared back at me matter-of-factly. "We have observed nine separate instances where you have exhibited the same unconscious behavior in a thirteen-day span. Elevated core temperature. Non-connected string of incomprehensible syllable utterances. Continuous body movement. Sweating. Shivering. All symptoms that can be affected by these instances of you exhibiting a… nightmare, as per your definition."

Shocked, I leaned back against the wall as I tried to process this. I had never known that I was this bad in my sleep. Sure, I mean I knew that I woke up soaked in sweat on some occasions and that I had been plagued with restless sleep as of late, but I had no idea that this was occurring so frequently and that others - Sagan - had noticed.

Usually, there would have been someone next to me to alert me of this sickness.

"How long has this been going on?" I croaked out, even though I knew the answer. It was completely obvious.

"Five months," was Sagan's reply.

How utterly… unsurprising.

"Yeah," was my only response. A weak nod of the head followed. "I figured."

"Then you _are_ aware that the death of your daughter has affected you greatly."

" _Of course_ I'm aware!" was my savage response as I pushed myself away from the wall, to within a step of Sagan, completely infuriated. "What else _could_ be the answer, Einstein? Why else would I be acting this way?! Is there something _else_ in my life that could have upturned everything that I had assumed to be normal? My child… is _dead_ , Sagan! She is dead and I can't do anything about it!"

Enraged, I roared as I gave one of the wall panels a punch. Pain shot from my knuckles like a bolt of lightning, the skin breaking open immediately. The panel smashed deeper into the inner hull, but I only received the tiniest amount of satisfaction from the action as I continued to heave and sweat profusely.

Sagan, unfazed, stared from the hole in the wall that I had just made then back to me. "We did not intend to cause offense, Samuel."

I simply grunted as I grabbed a spare tube of medi-gel from my desk and began to apply it to my bloodied knuckles. "You never do," I gritted out. "Any other observations you might have?"

That next batch of sarcasm also went over Sagan's head. "We realize that we might be undesirable emotions to manifest, but we feel that there exists a gap of logic. Why it is that you and Creator McLeod have isolated yourselves following your daughter's death instead of trying to combat your grief simultaneously? Empirical evidence has shown that voluntary confinement merely exacerbates states of regret in organics."

Creator McLeod. Sagan's designation for Nya. The geth's question was one that I asked myself every day, believe it or not. Nya had been so full of life once, every day a new adventure for her. She was the optimist among us, the one who helped to lift me up when I was terrified of failure. There had been many impossible barriers that we had breached together, always overcoming the odds at every turn. What had changed?

Everything had changed, that's what.

"It's not that simple," I answered with a bitter taste in my mouth. "People don't work like that all the time." I edged around the geth to head towards the kitchen unit, intent on fixing myself up some microwavable gruel - a bland oatmeal. Coffee too, of course.

Sagan followed like a puppy, keeping a calm gait throughout as the geth analyzed my every movement.

"Do you think that there will be any circumstance that will result in a reunion between you and Creator McLeod, Samuel?" Sagan offered, his head perking up as he tried to be helpful. "Or do you intend for these circumstances to last indefinitely?"

Dejected, I laid my palms flat on the kitchen counter and lowered my head tiredly, fingers grasping at cold linoleum.

"I really have no idea," was my answer.

It was true. We had grown too far apart. There had been so many things that had gone said and unsaid between us that we couldn't take back. I doubt that anyone else could possibly find a way to reconcile what had been such a strong bond after the death of their child.

It was undeniable that my daughter's death had been the cause of this rift. Such a wondrous, innocent being, our child, being taken away from us had to be one of the cruelest injustices that life could offer. I would never have known that merely a week after she was born, one of the happiest days of my life, that her brief presence would leave such a deep, lingering scar upon her family. That was the kind of unconditional love that could only be formed between a parent and their child - a well of great emotional strength… yet our biggest vulnerability.

The day that she died would be, without question, the worst day of my life.

I could never escape the emotions that day contained, neither awake nor asleep. I clearly remember waking up rather early one morning five months ago, finding the side of the bed next to me to be empty. This was not out of the ordinary, Nya liked to visit the baby in her room ever since she had been born. Wandering from my room in the apartment, I had headed over to where the baby slept in the next room, where I figured Nya would be. She loved her daughter so much - she spent every waking moment caring for the child with so much care and devotion. A proud parent, eager to watch their daughter grow up before her eyes.

But when I had opened the door that morning, the light from the window had fallen across the back of Nya's enviro-suit. She had been hunched over, cradling something in her arms. I could see that Nya's visor was lying carelessly on the ground, little diodes embedded in the mask twinkling serenely. The child's bubble - the little habitat that she had to be encased in all the time to protect her from germs and diseases - was oddly empty. I was about to call out to Nya when I saw that what she was holding in her arms was our daughter.

And Nya was silently weeping.

The next moments after that all blurred together when I ran over and dropped to my knees and beheld the terrible sight. Tears were streaming down Nya's face as the limp body of our daughter refused to move. The little baby's eyes on her gray face had been peacefully closed, almost like she could be asleep. But right away I knew that she had died.

Nearly inconsolable myself, I remembered that I had gently taken the child from Nya's shaking arms, holding the tiny quarian body close to my chest as I became paralytic from grief. Nya then began bawling, her outstretched arms still grasping, as if she was begging to her Ancestors for forgiveness, to bring her baby back to her. An hour passed by as we, the numb pair, were left dumbstruck as we realized that we had been left all alone in the night.

Our daughter, barely a week old, was dead.

Nya had to be sedated for days as she could not be comforted. I was back to remembering what it was like to lose a family member, a sensation that I thought I would never have to experience ever again. I began to drink more heavily, trying to drown my grief night after night. I would leave in the mornings, my days now uselessly empty, to sit myself down in a bar somewhere and come home extraordinarily late at night, only to find that Nya would have not moved an inch from when I had left her: all bundled in blankets upon the bed, turned on her side to face the wall.

I had begun to lose her too during this time, but I never figured out how to draw her back in. Deep down, I knew that I would have to step up, to save her from the emotional agony that was causing her to waste away in front of me. She was slowly dying a bloodless death.

We never did find out how our daughter had died. It was like her little body had all of a sudden just… _quit_. Despite all the revolutionary advances in medicine during this time, the unexpected deaths of infants was still a problem that plagued most races. A distraught Nya refused to have an autopsy done on our girl, too saddled with emotion to even fathom the notion of someone cutting into our daughter. We ended up cremating her days after she had died, but this meant that we would never truly find out the cause of what had claimed her so early.

Was sudden infant death syndrome really the culprit? It seemed too coincidental if it was true. SIDS was just a blanket term anyway, because infants were so fragile that they could easily die from the smallest acts of carelessness. If a baby even slept wrong, like on their stomach, there was a chance that they could suffocate, and SIDS would be classified as the cause. Perhaps genetics were the root cause of the problem, maybe? Highly unlikely, as a full genetic mapping would take an inordinate amount of time and would most likely reveal nothing of interest to us.

I had my suspicions, though, but although I could not prove them to anyone, I could make a good case as to how my daughter died.

That it had been my fault.

When quarians are born, they are immediately placed into tiny, environmentally sealed chambers called "bubbles" to prevent them from getting sick because the immune system of an infant, especially a quarian infant, is practically nonexistent. They live in these bubbles until adolescence, until they are ready to walk around in a suit, at least until their immune systems become more developed. An adult quarian may be able to survive the sporadic infection every now and then, but there is practically no chance of survival for an infant if they come into contact with a stray bit of bacteria which is why they have to be placed in isolation for so long. This was in contrast to humans, whose immune systems are typically stronger than an adult quarian's from the moment they are born. But Nya had wanted a quarian baby, not a human one. Humans had no way of breeding with quarians, so for Nya to even have a baby, we had to utilize a sperm donor in order for her to become pregnant. This was a decision that I had found myself at peace with - I wanted a child just as much as Nya did and this was the only way for her to experience the joy of motherhood. It didn't matter that our daughter had none of my genes, I was going to look forward to raising her as my own flesh and blood regardless.

Nya and I had made sure to dramatically upgrade our apartment's filtration system to the point where even Nya would be able to walk around the place without her suit on, for it was so clean. The baby we kept in her room, in her bubble, watching her gurgle happily away as we stared at her lovingly, separated by a thick yet clear membrane.

Despite the danger, there were certain conditions that required us having to take the baby out of her bubble, mostly for feeding. This happened several times a day with Nya having to attend to our daughter, as was her right as the mother. I sometimes joined the two in the room to stand by, watching over the quiet scene with rapt interest.

I have to emphasize: feeding was the _only_ reason why we ever exposed our daughter to the air. But I could think of no other explanation as to why our daughter suddenly died without warning… and that was because I had been in the room when she was exposed to the air for some of these moments.

Nya couldn't have been the culprit, her and the baby shared a symbiotic relationship. The child had come from her womb, was of her blood. There was no way she could get sick from my wife. The only unknown variable in this case was me. I was a human… and my daughter was quarian. As advanced and high-tech as the filtration and decontamination systems were in our apartment, I should have known that they could not guarantee that every single infectious strain would be eliminated upon my person. When I stayed in the child's room to watch her feed, I could have unknowingly been exposing her this entire time.

But before I could ever realize this, she was dead. Gone. Without as much as a whimper.

Everything became chaos after that.

As Nya wasted away in the wake of the child's death, I knew that something had to be done lest I lose her to misery. She was blaming herself for what happened when I knew that her own conclusion was not true. Her love for our daughter was too overpowering - she felt she had little else to live for and the intense guilt was consuming her before my eyes. She would spend hours crying to herself in bed, babbling on and on about how it was her fault. She would barely eat - Nya was starting to lose weight at an alarming rate. Meanwhile I was only sinking further and further into drunkenness. The more Nya mourned, the more intoxicated I became. Finally, it a moment of sober clarity, it occurred to me that I only had to say one thing to get Nya to abandon her doomed downward spiral, yet I knew that if I did such a thing I could destroy everything that we had built, perhaps permanently.

And then one night, with acid burning a hole in my stomach, I finally gave her a reason to begin living again.

I told her that I was the one to blame for our daughter dying.

No… I _urged_ her to blame me. Anything so that she could stop blaming herself, no matter the cost.

It turned out that it would cost me dearly.

" _You bastard!" Nya had shrieked as she hurled the lamp through the air. It met the wall and cracked into a thousand pieces, spraying upon the floor while the dust slowly floated downward. "You knew! You knew that you killed her! How? How could you?!"_

 _She whirled upon me, fully clad in her enviro-suit this time as she stood at the opposite bed from me. Her eyes were awash with a mixture of pain and fury, a burning rage bursting out of her as she simultaneously sobbed, her voice wet and raspy. In contrast to her horribly shaking body, I was frozen in place, the beating of my heart making the only noticeable movements to me._

" _Nya…" I choked out lamely, "...you have to believe me… I had no idea…"_

" _Bullshit! You should have known! She was our daughter! Our DAUGHTER! And you took her from me!"_

 _I fell to my knees, tears now flowing freely down my face, feeling like I was being torn apart from what I knew was the truth and what was best for our family. But I realized that, no matter what I could do, I was always going to lose Nya._

" _I beg you…" was my plea, "Nya… I beg you. I cannot bring her back but I swear on my life that… that I didn't mean for this to happen. Blame me all you want - I deserve it! Just please… if you still have any love for me-,"_

" _Love…?" Nya hoarsely repeated in disbelief. "Love? After what you did?! How? How can you expect me to still love you?!"_

" _My god, Nya… please…"_

" _MURDERER!" came the most heartbreaking cry that I had ever heard her voice before._

 _With a howl of anguish, Nya grabbed at a nearby portrait upon the nightdesk - a depiction of the two of us staring longingly at each other - and hurled it at my head. I ducked just in time but the frame made a hideous cracking noise as the glass impacted against the wall. I turned to look at the fallen item, aching as I saw it scattered in pieces, irreparable._

" _LEAVE!" Nya shrieked. "Get out! Get out of here! Take that damn geth with you too! I never want to see you again!"_

 _To my everlasting shame, I did as I was told. I did not try to assuage things any further, to subject myself to more abuse and torment at the hands of my wife. I simply gave in, my guts twisting into knots, as I knew that my life had finally all fallen apart in my hands. Unable to look at Nya any longer, tears blinding my eyes, I got up off my knees and left._

 _I broke down completely on the elevator ride down after that._

"There's no going back any longer," I said out loud as I dumped my empty bowl and mug into the sink, Sagan having been staring at me the entire time. "I fucked everything up and I can't take it back."

Sagan tilted his head slightly as he scooted aside so that I could leave the kitchen area. "Yet you remain unconvinced that you were the sole cause of your misfortune," was the geth's observation.

I made a disparaging noise as I grabbed my jacket from a nearby closet in the living area, throwing the article about my shoulders. I lifted my father's pipe from where I had left it last night, holding it comfortably in my hand where the cool wood met my warm palm.

"Like that even matters," I blithely shook my head as I turned to leave the ship, savagely punching the door controls as I stepped in front of the airlock. "We never even decided on a _name_ for our daughter, Sagan. She died without a name…"

Abandoning Sagan once again to muse over my mistakes in his own free time, I shot through the airlock the instant the doors open, leaving the geth alone in my wake.

* * *

Sagan's rigid posture was so austere that he appeared immaculately statuesque. After the human had departed the hold of the _Obtruder_ , the geth had remained in the same position that he had been in, facing the direction that Samuel, had last occupied before he had gone off for reasons unbeknownst to the geth. Sagan had learned over the years that it was next to impossible to try and accurately predict the actions of organics to a degree and, if a geth could be frustrated, the amount he had learned had been so annoyingly miniscule.

As a synthetic, Sagan was driven by order and logic rather than emotion. Sagan understood the chemistry behind emotions and how they affected living individuals, but he knew that he lacked the capacity to truly understand how they could be manipulated to control the actions of others. Therefore, when Sagan tried to glean understanding by trying to decipher Samuel's or Creator McLeod's point of view, the geth always came up with an outcome that would never realistically transpire.

This inability to comprehend stumped Sagan. This was a much different enigma than he had encountered before in his entire lifespan. Not only were these organics, Samuel and Creator McLeod, acting in a contrarian manner, they also refused to consider all logical outcomes regarding the state of their relationship.

Sagan had tried to voice his concerns to Samuel before, but had been rudely rebuffed time and again, with the human consistently refusing to listen to the reason of a synthetic. Despite the boorish behavior, Sagan was not offended. In truth, he knew that his suggestions on how Samuel should approach his life were foreign, disconnected. Perhaps the timing of the offerings was still raw, too inappropriate. The human was still too despondent and the Creator, the human's mate, threatened bodily harm upon the geth should they be in close proximity to one another. All for the death of the young Creator that had been conceived? It seemed so odd for Sagan to place so much attention upon a newborn, but the geth had to concede that this was a common attitude amongst the progenitors of children - a few extranet searches had helped clear that up.

All manner of things could be interpreted as data to Sagan - everything was assigned to a value. Complex decisions could be boiled down to a simple series of bare calculations that provided an unequivocal and straightforward answer to be acted upon. Which was why, when Sagan ran computations regarding Samuel and Creator McLeod's intense bond with each other, the geth was always puzzled at the fact that the organics were acting out the opposite actions that the data clearly presented.

On paper it made sense. Sagan had observed, on so many occasions that an organic would not even bother to keep track, actions between Samuel and Creator McLeod that clearly signified their attraction for the other. Documentation regarding their legal status as a mated pair were also accessible for Sagan to peruse, further cementing the geth's impression of the two. With all this evidence leading to the undeniable fact that both the human and the Creator clearly had harbored deep feelings for each other, it was understandable that their decision to remain apart perplexed the geth.

Sagan even went to the trouble of weighing the instances of chivalry and devotion against the moments where Samuel and Creator McLeod had exhibited some emotional friction. It seemed horribly lopsided. From verbal accounts as well as confirmed visual proof, Sagan had been a witness to the irrefutable fact of the two's powerful connection. On Rannoch, the Creator had acted on her own volition to protect her mate from harm and later on, when the two had been trapped in a sinking ship in the middle of an ocean, the human had cut the Creator's arm off when she had been stuck underwater knowing that he was causing her pain so that she could survive. Weeks later, the human had voluntarily allowed the Creator to conceive a child from the genetic material of another Creator, knowing that, as a human, he would never be able to pass his genes on to his child. It was a small sacrifice, a selfless action that had been in the hopes of creating a happier household for the future.

Perhaps that was why Samuel and Creator McLeod had placed so much stock into the loss of their child. Maybe they felt that their future had been taken from them and that such unfairness could not go without blame.

Sagan was just speculating at this point, as much as a geth could conceivably spitball. These were all questions, scenarios that he could not formulate a decisive answer to - at least not to an organic's interpretation. As decisive as a synthetic could be, Sagan conceded that he could never understand the bond between a husband and a wife, between a parent and their child, the way an organic could. This was something that could not even be explained to Sagan all that well, as an organic's perspective on the matter was biased, inherently flawed. All organics had it in their nature the desire to reproduce, the need to create life. Geth had no such aspirations. Reproduction was nonexistent for a synthetic - geth were created, not born. There was no clear path to enlightenment as all roads simply deviated for Sagan.

As Sagan continued to stand in place, dutifully at the airlock, he worried that if Samuel and Creator McLeod could not look past their limited views, then the festering hatred would soon become absolute.

* * *

I left the docks with the intent to find a place a bit more expansive than the interior of my ship, yet at the same time quiet enough to allow me my own volume to think. Don't get me wrong, the docks, oddly enough, were pretty quiet as they were but at this hour they invited a whole host of people to be mulling about the many levels as they bustled to where their ships were parked.

Fortunately, I knew of just the perfect place for me to reside for a bit. And no, it was not a bar for me to get drunk at. I had learned my lesson last time.

An unusually quick elevator ride up ten or so stories revealed an observation point unbeknownst to most of the general public. It was a mostly empty balcony comprised solely of long silver benches that faced outward towards space and the planet upon which the Citadel orbited. One could get a very good view from here - it was very much a gateway towards soothing memories.

Settling myself in, I lifted my pipe to my face, having filled it on the elevator, and quickly struck a match to light the contents of the bowl. As soon as a cherry-red glow began to blossom, I waved the match to extinguish it before taking a tentative puff of the pipe.

I nearly spluttered into a coughing fit as the tobacco smoke rushed into my lungs. I guess I was a bit out of practice. It had been a few years since I had quit smoking cold turkey, so it would make sense that some of my habits had atrophied. I'm not sure why I picked today of all days to start back up on this lifestyle - perhaps my out-of-control lifestyle had some influence in my cravings. All speculation at this point. Lung cancer was a non-issue in this day and age anyway so I could smoke with impunity, with complete disregard to my long-term health.

An hour passed with me doing nothing but staring into space as I occasionally smoked my father's pipe. Looking at Earth from this distance was a treasure in of itself, but a mixed blessing as the light reflecting off of it tended to drown out the glow of the nearby stars and planets that filled the sky with luminous texture. It was a good place just to relax with the ultimate screensaver in front of me.

I eventually became restless and deposited the smoldering contents of the pipe into a nearby waste receptacle. I used a cloth to clean out the bowl of any tar and residue, smearing a sticky black substance into the thick fabric. After wiping away my fingerprints I stowed the pipe back into my pocket as I began to wander aimlessly, with no thought to my current destination.

I trudged through a glass hallway, lit by neon and keeping black space as my backdrop. It was all deja vu for me. I remembered the first time that I had found myself on this station, after being discharged from a hospital after receiving a bullet wound to my stomach. I had been lost then, disoriented and alone. Wasn't that what I was like now? Hard to believe, that after all the work I had put into my life since being placed into this universe that I had managed to screw it all up, to reset everything back to square one.

What an utter failure I had become. No better off than what I had once been.

Turning around the next corner revealed the main pedestrian avenue, about a couple hundred meters in front of me. Mentally preparing myself to walk back into civilization and people, I unconsciously began drawing in deeper breaths, expanding lung tissue to the point where it seemed that they were bloating past their normal capacity.

Yet about of a quarter of the way through the hallway, from a recess that I was about to pass by without a second thought, a slim figure quickly trotted their way forward after jerking in surprise as they spotted me slowly walk my way down the boulevard.

I was a bit perplexed at being approached, even more so when I saw the brown and sandy tan colors of a quarian's enviro-suit peek out through the natural shadow. I had never seen this quarian (a woman) before in my life and I had to make a quick mental aside as to how many quarians I had met compared to any of the other species in the galaxy.

"I'm so sorry," the quarian started out in a timid fashion, drooping their head apologetically, "but I'm trying to get to this arm's factory district. A volus said it was on this level and I think I got turned around in one of the elevator bays. You don't happen to know where Fireza Fabs is located, do you?"

"Fireza Fabs?" I repeated as I looked upward in thought as my mouth spoke on instinct and courtesy. "Yeah, I think I do. You just need to take the third-,"

Before I could finish my sentence, a arm suddenly shot their way out from behind me and quickly wrapped around my neck while the young quarian impassively watched, her eyes slit in pleasure. I had not even heard this new person come up behind me but I was able to get a look at the hand that was attacking me before I found myself being choked out, a smooth appendage coated in a scaly blue skin.

Blue… an _asari?_

I uttered a horrible gagging noise as my own hands instinctively shot up to pry the arm away from my throat but before I could exert any leverage, I felt a firm object being planted into the small of my back, leaving me milliseconds to question what it was until I found myself convulsing as electricity traveled through my body. The voltaic arcs zapped up my spine, causing every square inch of my body to erupt in fiery pain. It felt like explosions were crackling in my brain, my teeth pressing down so hard on each other that they nearly cracked into pieces. Drool dribbled down the corner of my mouth and a low groan escaped my throat as I began down the passage towards unconsciousness, the taser having done its work.

As I felt a bag being shoved over my head, the last sensation before everything went dark, I could hear the tan-suited quarian girl crow triumphantly, "I _told_ you he would be stupid enough to fall for the damsel in distress routine!"

 _Yes…_ I thought to myself. _Stupid me_...

* * *

 **A/N: I _did_ say that I wasn't going to pull any punches. I hope you're prepared, because things can certainly get a whole lot worse.**

 **Thanks everyone for all the feedback so far! I'm definitely eager to know what you guys' thoughts are of this and I appreciate the support a lot!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Daughter Gone: "Memory" by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch from the film _Blade Runner 2049_**

 **Sam's Ruminations/Prelude to Kidnap: "The Ballad of Londinium" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**


	4. Chapter 3: Nemesis

I awoke to the sensation of being dragged.

Breathing was uncomfortable thanks to the rough bag covering my face. I could feel my own stale breath heightening the temperature around my face, stifling me and causing me to begin profusely sweating while the rest of my body remained relatively cool. I only breathed harder the further I awoke, eventually proceeding into taking large gasps, my lungs desperate for a chilling, wintry intake of fresh air.

Two pairs of arms were grasping me as I was being hauled across the ground, the awkward position feeling like my shoulders were about to be popped out of my sockets. Upon the small of my back, I felt a tiny section of my skin prickle in agitation - I knew that my body had to be reddened where the taser had been shoved against me. I couldn't believe my luck, it had been the second time in two days that I had been tased although the reasons this time around were hazier, unclear. The tips of my shoes occasionally made a squealing sound as the rubber soles rubbed angrily against the freezing floor. Whoever these guys were that were lugging me, they had to be quite strong to heft my weight as I was not exactly a twig of a human.

As to what they wanted, I had no idea. These guys weren't cops - this whole ordeal seemed way too shadowy for any civilized organization to carry out.

Unwilling to give my captors any satisfaction right off the bat that I was in pain, I kept my jaw firmly clamped shut while my arms hollered bloody murder at me for being put in such an uncomfortable position. At one point, the top of my feet were horribly banged over and over I was carried up a staircase. My entire sense of direction was shot to hell. I wanted so badly to ask questions, but this bag robbed me of what little breath that I had and I sincerely doubted that I would get any answers right at this moment.

Two minutes later (or two hours, for all I knew), I felt a draft nip at my body after my ears had popped from a rapid change in air pressure. I was in an elevator, if I had to guess. I then passed under a threshold of air forcibly being blown downward, a sterile environment. The two people carrying me handedly led me across the room for a bit before forcibly shoving me into a rather firm chair, un-cushioned and rigid. My hands were pushed down onto the armrests and I quickly felt a warm ring envelop around my wrists once they had been forced into place. I tried lifting my arms in response and found that I couldn't. They had been bound to the chair - omni-cuffs, I figured. The same thing had occurred with my legs as they too had been pushed against the chair to be encircled with the ostensibly glowing bands. Bagged and bound, I grunted as I struggled in the chair, nearly reverting to a feral state.

"Well?" I muttered as calmly as I could, taunting my captors while I turned my head this way and that, despite it being impossible to see. "What now? Am I to be kept in the dark? Are we going to go through the usual song and dance? I've seen how this goes in the movies. You're only following a template, to be executed as predictably as possible. Bag some fool off the street, hold him hostage, collect the exorbitant ransom. It's a tried and tested plan… do you expect it to work?"

I tilted my head down as I let out a rasping laugh. "But you're hopelessly deluded if you think that I'm a worthy ransom candidate. What am I worth to you? Go on, say it. I'm curious. I'll be willing to bet that whatever sum you come up with… it will be several times higher than how _I_ would appraise myself-,"

I squinted my eyes as the bag was abruptly ripped off my head, the material moving so fast that it made a burn upon my face. I made a small noise of discomfort and winced at the brief introduction of new stimuli - cool air smashing into my face, nose and ears no longer stifled from the thick covering - but quickly recovered because it was dark enough that I was not blinded right at the outset. Grimacing, I bared my teeth, trying to appear in control despite being placed into a cowed position.

A sandy-suited quarian stood over me, the bag clenched in a hand. Her expression beyond the dusty visor was one of disdain and arrogance. She was the one who had initially distracted me before I had been tased and put here in this room, I realized. I gave her a quick once-over and deduced that I did not recognize her from anywhere. The trappings upon her suit, the pattern on her hood, the distinct colors further defining her form, even her voice had all been unfamiliar to me. So why was she doing this to me in the first place? Had I done some tangential act in the past that happened to wrong her?

Scowling up at her, I grinded my teeth for a second, managing to hide my unease skillfully behind an enraged exterior. "I'm appreciating the hospitality in this place."

"You are either very brave or very stupid to be making quips like that," the woman said, eyes slit in annoyance. She dangled the bag for a bit before limply depositing it at my feet. "I was told that you don't shut up easily."

"Oh, really? By whom?"

"Sorry. You're going to have to figure that out for yourself."

"Yeah, well I'm not in the mood for playing games right now. Who the fuck are you and why the hell did you drag me here?"

The quarian woman just waggled a finger maddingly in my face. "Uh-uh, impatient human. Questions come later. And all the answers might not follow."

If I could, I would have reached up and smashed this woman's head upon this chair out of sheer frustration. Being trussed up like a turkey might be somewhat of an obstacle to that goal, but I could still revel in my violent fantasies still.

Yet I found it in myself to make a slight smirk. "What did I do to you, huh? We've never met, have we?"

"No. I've never seen you before today. But that doesn't change things."

"Why would that be the case? Come on, humor me a little. Why was I brought here?"

The quarian glanced in all directions, like she was already verging on hesitation, to her embarrassment. "You might be surprised at the simplicity of it all. I brought you here, because I was asked to do so."

It was frustratingly obvious as to where a conversation like this was going to lead: nowhere. I was only gleaning partial and fragmented explanations pertaining to my current situation. At least I had confirmation that whoever was doing this to me had not chosen to reveal themselves yet as this girl in front of me, with her supply of useless and evasive answers, was definitely not the head honcho here. Either she was a tremendous actress or she had no idea as to what the bigger picture entailed. I had a feeling that my being here was not entirely a product of chance - that this had been engineered specifically for me in mind, even though I could not grasp the connection as to why this was all necessary for someone like me.

As to where "here" was, now that the stuffy confines of the bag had been lifted, I was now allowed to fully take in my surroundings.

It took a long time for the shock to die down.

In front of me was a magnificent window that spanned the length of the room we were in - one that led out and invited the gaze out towards the stars, both the Earth and the moon being captured perfectly within the vista. To my left and right revealed that I was actually in a windowed room within _another_ room, only this room was suspended over a dark and foreboding hangar, very much like where an executive would sit as they observed those working under him, both literally and figuratively. This room - where I sat - was a glass box suspended over the ground that gave its occupants a primary view of the outside void first and foremost, with the trappings of the real world - the Citadel - placed in the background as an afterthought. Yes, I was still on the Citadel as it was hard for me not to notice the station's giant arms spearing through the eternal night sky, each one twinkling with life.

Turning my head towards the sides, I could see tiny figures scurrying around in the bowels of the hangar, all existing underneath the scope of the darkened glass box that held me. Armored, dark suited individuals - all of them quarians - raced around the multiple levels of the cavernous hole, ultimately lost in their duties. Mechs of all shapes and sizes were intertwined within the frantic fray - hoisting crates too heavy for organics to lift. Automatic cranes dropped down from the ceiling to quickly spirit away the containers that had been placed in the specified loading areas, into the pair of shuttlecraft perched upon their landing bays.

Organized chaos. A tangled web of production all below my feet. It was truly mesmerizing to watch.

I tried to twist my body in the chair as far as I could to see the entire spectacle, completely bewildered. Why the hell was I in a place with so many quarians, especially on the Citadel? What was going on around here? Who was I to these people?

"What… the _fuck…_ is this place?" I mustered as I looked back at the girl.

"You'll see," was the syrupy reply, in a sing-song tone, no less. "I'm Vahl."

"Good for you," I drawled right off the bat, hoping that I sounded extremely uninterested.

That earned me a savage slap, so forceful it knocked my head back. I blinked, astonished, as my face began to throb while I craned my neck back into position. The blow from Vahl had been so fast, so unexpected, that the impact had not really hurt all that much but it was the sheer spontaneity of the violence that shocked me. A very unsettling feeling began to stir in the pit of my stomach, one that hinted that I might be a bit in over my head at this point.

"So… that's how it's going to be," I uttered to myself before I ruffled my body to try to appear more dignified. " _You're_ the resident bitch of the house, do I have that right?"

With a hiss, Vahl now raised her closed fist and grabbed a fistful of my shirt, intent on slugging me in the face when a deep voice slashed through the darkness.

" _Enough_ , Vahl. I don't want him damaged right at the outset."

The girl glowered at me as she released her hold on my shirt and backed off like a wounded animal. A heavy noise - footsteps - clicked upon the floor as another person entered the room. I did not move my head but let my eyes track the source of the noise as a pair of dark colored boots eventually edged into my line of sight. I then trailed my gaze upward hesitantly, this new voice triggering emotions that I had previously locked away seemingly for good. The memories filtered back… ones of fear and rage.

"Surprised to see me, Sam?" the new individual asked as our gazes finally met, their veiled expression utterly relishing the moment.

I _was_ surprised. And upset. And mad. A lump in my gut rose horrifically and I almost thought that I was going to throw up out of sheer alarm before I set my jaw, fire raging behind my eyes.

" _Eyzn_ ," I breathed, everything clicking all at once. "You've looked better."

The quarian, just a hair shorter than me in height, was silent for a second before he bellowed out a laugh, truly a frightening noise. Quiet chuckles also chimed in from around the room, from people that resided just out of sight. I kept looking at Eyzn, my chest clenching up from the familiar terror that this man naturally instilled within me. I had been in this position before with him, with me strapped down while he proceeded to sinisterly taunt and torture me. Was I going to have to go through this again?

"Ah… hah," Eyzn sighed as he made a magnanimous gesture with his hand. "Even though I've been longing for this chance for years, I never realized just how much I missed your bravado, Sam."

I grimaced in return, but said nothing. It was still taking me some time to fully process the fact that one out of two people in the galaxy that hated me with every fiber of their being had me tied to a chair in front of them. I started to involuntarily tremble, but managed to keep it discrete for the time being. The amount of times, not to mention the ferocity of which, I had clashed with this man in the past definitely left lasting marks upon me, in many different forms.

Eyzn was one of the largest quarians I had ever met, which translated to an average build for humans. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and deceptively strong, not to mention he possessed a keen mind for science. Not good qualities you want a foe to have. He naturally carried a rather blithe attitude for the most part, but underneath it all was a severely sadistic streak that unnerved me to my core. Eyzn always seemed to have a plan in mind no matter the situation, very rarely was he caught off guard, and he was a fearsome warrior whenever his blood ran hot… which it tended to quite often.

He was also my brother-in-law.

Well, technically, my _step_ -brother-in-law. Eyzn's mother, Kraana, had married into Nya's family a long while back and was not my wife's biological brother, although Eyzn certainly acted like it was the case in a rather arrogant fashion. We had first ran into each other on Rannoch, the quarian homeworld, during a vacation that I had organized for Nya as part of a bucket list trip, seeing as how she had never spent any substantial time on her world before. I had just wanted to have a special trip with my wife, to get away from all the hubbub that was ever-present on the Citadel. Midway through our vacation though, Nya's extended family, mainly at the whim of her father, arrived to interrupt our plans so that my wife's long-lost dad could have the opportunity to get back in touch with his daughter. Nya, having believed all her life that her father was dead, was shocked to discover proof to the contrary, but more so from her father's eventual request that she leave her life behind to come live with him, completely careless to the opinions of Nya's close friends, not to mention her spouse. Obvious to everyone except her father, Nya violently reacted by refusing the offer and fleeing. Nya had chosen her husband - she had no choice of who her father could be and, considering that she had spent more time with me than she ever did with her dad, there was no way that Nya would have chosen to leave the life she had just begun to forge with me.

Kraana, along with Eyzn, played along with Nya's father's wishes to get Nya back, although the two were harboring feelings of jealousy for the attention that Nya's father was trying to lavish upon his daughter instead of Eyzn, whom had known his step-dad a lot longer than Nya did. That jealousy drove Kraana and Eyzn to pursue us across Rannoch with an intensity that eclipsed Nya's father's intentions, at one point imprisoning and torturing us out of spite, before we managed to gain the upper hand and force their surrender by the end.

Kraana would eventually perish in the final struggle and Eyzn had sworn to me that he would "hurt me in ways that I could not comprehend." At the time I had brushed it off, considering it to be worthless ramblings from a defeated man. Apparently I sorely lacked vision, because here I was, once again at Eyzn's mercy, vulnerable to be molded according to his will.

Pain was not unfamiliar to me, but men like Eyzn, who had let themselves become forged from their hardships and their thirst for vengeance, had gained a deeper understanding on revealing excruciatingly bare weaknesses. His idea of hurting me would be all the more elegant… but all the more terrible.

Eyzn looked different from the last time that I saw him. His enviro-suit seemed a little more elaborate than before - a few patches of armor draped his form in odd, seemingly random places. A curved shoulder guard here, a forearm band there, sharpened greaves attached to his tall boots. Most of the electric blue coloration that had formerly graced his suit had been discarded - his visor and his hood covering his helmet were the only two colored objects upon him. The rest of his trappings matched the color of his enviro-suit: pitch black. If he was aiming to look more intimidating, then he certainly succeeded with his wardrobe.

He was even wearing his hood in a different manner. Whereas on a male quarian, their familial hoods would be a thin, yet hardy strip of stylized cloth that tightly clung to the helmet, Eyzn's hood was baggy and loose, oddly evoking the conformities as befits a quarian _female_. Parts of his helmet was now thrown in shadow, bringing out the searing glow of his eyes. For a race so rooted in conventionality, Eyzn's little rebellion with his fashion, as insignificant as it actually was, the deviation itself was a bit disarming.

His helmet itself was also different from the norm. I had always assumed that quarians used the same model of helmet for manufacturing coherence. After all, it would be more convenient for a materials-starved race to utilize the same parts in order to maintain structural integrity for everyone's enviro-suit, arguably the most important piece of technology the quarians had to deal with. Despite that, Eyzn's helmet was different - it had a greater surface area of the translucent covering that ran from the bottom of the helmet and beyond the lip of the hood atop it, which gave it a rather bubble-inspired appearance. The circular vocabulator was still the same model but the visor itself appeared to be an awkward fit as there was quite a noticeable panel gap between the two pieces yet it still seemed to have a solid seal. If I looked closely, I could see an odd sea of static wash over the luminous blue coating, occasionally warping the infuriated eyes that lay behind it.

Eyzn hobbled closer to me, his three-fingered hands quivering in anticipation.

"I believe that you know why I'm here. I've come to make good on my promise."

That, I had gleaned right away. But I was more distracted by the heavy limp that Eyzn was demonstrating at the moment. It was odd that a limp would be so obvious, as this quarian had such a huge inferiority complex that he could give some past politicians a run for their money. Eyzn _hated_ to be perceived as weak and useless. It made sense that he would be limping though, considering the fact that I was the one who gave him the limp in the first place.

The last encounter that we had shared together on Rannoch had not ended well for Eyzn. He had done a good job trouncing me, especially on one occasion where he broke several of my bones and nearly killed me, but I would go on to best him in every bout since then. On board a shuttle headed off-world, Eyzn and I, already established as antagonists by then, ran into each other unexpectedly and he had tried to blow my head off with a shotgun. It was only from my quick reaction that I had managed to shunt the gun downward at the last second, which had inadvertently resulted in Eyzn pulling the trigger prematurely, blowing half his foot off. Mere moments after that had occurred, I had probably done some serious damage to Eyzn's throat when I had grabbed and throttled him while he had been yowling in pain. It would certainly explain the fact that Eyzn's voice was deeper and raspier than I remembered. I must have crushed his larynx all those years ago.

"Foot still bothering you, huh?" I murmured around a tight grin, indicating the limp.

Eyzn grunted as he tapped his boot upon the ground. "Hmph. Suppose you're particularly proud of yourself?"

"Don't blame me. You were the idiot that shot your own foot off."

"Still a _bosh'tet_ , eh, Sam? But it wasn't a total loss. They couldn't whip up any cloned transplants for me to use… because, who transplants half a foot? Cybernetics, mostly. Nothing too fancy, but there are some balance issues that I need to iron out. The throat? Ah, but that's useless. The tissue in my throat was damaged a bit beyond the skill for some rudimentary medic to repair when you choked me a little too well. The vocal cords are now permanently altered - nothing that I can do about that. You've left me with some interesting reminders, Sam."

"I can say the same. It's hard for me to forget how you whipped me up into a drug-fueled frenzy all those years ago. Not to mention that you beat the shit out of me when I was your captive."

The quarian gripped his hands behind his back as he thoughtfully considered the ceiling, ignoring my last comment.

"Well, like you, I've been dealing with my own scars ever since that day. Every single waking moment of my life, Sam, has been of you."

"That's cute," I snorted. "I have a secret admirer!"

Eyzn then stepped forward and brutally backhanded me across the face. There was nowhere for me to go, no place to dodge, and my cheek absorbed the blow handedly. My head snapped to the side, a thin stream of blood spat out from the corner of my mouth, and I mumbled a garbled sentence, seeing stars.

"You're not taking this seriously, Sam," Eyzn clucked.

"Fuck you," I spat, clearing my mouth of blood, my jaw twitching as the pain gradually fizzled away. "I don't have to listen to this crap."

"I don't think that you fully appreciate the situation that you're in. If you've noticed, you're not exactly in friendly territory."

I cracked my neck as I resumed glaring at the alien. "I'm not blind, idiot. I can see for myself that you've got quite the little operation going on here. The troops, the mechs, the works. From the looks of things, it seems like you've been resuming your dear stepfather's work. This time, you're the one with the army."

" _He's_ not part of the picture this time," Eyzn hissed as he made a ferocious cutting movement with a hand. No love lost for his stepfather too, weirdly. "But you are right that the tactics I've inherited are… similar, to say the least. A conqueror leading his own private army. As a matter of fact, it's been a boon to me as to how many bodies that I've been able to snag up… and we're only growing more in size with every day. Since Xen's arrest and execution there have still been a cadre of young and directionless men and women out there that had been on her side, forbidden from ever returning to Rannoch, longing for a sense of purpose. It's perfect - a group of young, capable people disgruntled at the establishment, their overall morals weakened from their government's ineffectiveness! I give them that direction in exchange for their service. We're all exiles here. We've nowhere to call home, back to being nomads. You'd be surprised at how willing people are to throw away their ideals when you present them with a purpose, to set them on track. They're more susceptible to suggestions, no matter how… undesirable they are. All this, because I can give them that which has been taken away from them."

His foot then nudged my own roughly. "Just like, eventually, I'll take from you."

I chuckled, ruefully shaking my head. "What's there to take? You've come a bit late, I'm afraid. I've already lost everything valuable to me."

Eyzn slammed his hands down on the armrests of my chair as he surged his visor forward to within an inch of my face. The static blue visor fizzed angrily as the crescent shape of the quarian's eyes narrowed even more.

"You might think that because you have known loss that you think you're immune to it. You are _wrong_. Everyone always has something to lose. No one can hide from it. You push it down with your rage, your anger, but it always lingers, cutting you to the bone! I _know_ the pain, Sam, but I'm not convinced that you share my sentiment."

I lurched forward at Eyzn's words, teeth chattering angrily as fire bloomed in the back of my eyes.

"S-...Sentiment?! You _dare_ compare yourself to me? If you only had an _inkling_ of what I've lost in my life, you would not even fathom opening your mouth to even speak a single syllable of the lie you just spat into my face."

The double meaning of my words would be lost on Eyzn, I knew. No one except Nya truly knew of the secret that I harbored, the fact that I had always been a stranger in this strange land. Yet it had been so long since that fateful day that even I had trouble deciding which universe was the real one for me. So much had changed since then… too much for me to walk away from.

Eyzn gave a thoughtful nod. "Right… your daughter," he breathed, catching my horrified expression. "Yes, I know about what happened to her. I do sympathize with you Sam, but it won't be enough to dissuade me from my goal."

"Go fuck yourself," I seethed once again. "Your words mean nothing to me."

"That hurts, Sam. I wouldn't know the agony of losing my own child… but my own pain comes very close, if not equal. Which is why you are here in front of me right now, because I believe that you could be the very instigator of my torment, although I've not yet found the concrete proof that I need."

My wrists still strained at the omni-cuffs nailing me to the chair. Blinking occurred rarely as I sought to penetrate Eyzn's visor with my gaze alone, daring him to make a move.

"Could you imagine losing a mother, Sam?" Eyzn continued. "You remember her, right? Kraana. _My_ mother. She was killed on Rannoch… and I know that either you or your wife did it. I never saw it happen, but I eventually got to see her mutilated body afterward. Someone had shattered her visor into her face, Sam. There were giant glass shards sticking out of her skin. Her eyes were sliced and punctured from the fragments. Her face was so mangled that her corpse could have been anyone's, almost completely unidentifiable. Now, are you really going to claim that what you had to suffer through was worse than that? Your daughter died peacefully while mine was brutally murdered."

"The difference is that your mother deserved it," I growled, feet now quaking, rattling against the cuffs. "My daughter was innocent and she died because of a mistake. Kraana tried to hurt me… hurt Nya. She was guilty the moment she laid her hands on us. I'm not sorry she's gone."

Eyzn did not hesitate after I had finished speaking for he immediately proceeded to punch me full-on in the stomach. I folded at the waist, the air rudely shoved out of my lungs as I began to cough. Blood mixed with saliva spattered the floor in front of me and the room blurred for a few seconds as I pathetically gasped.

"You always did talk too much," I dimly heard Eyzn say as I straightened up again.

I spat a wad of bloody phlegm in front of Eyzn's boot. "Always felt it was part of my charm."

"At least give me the courtesy of an answer. If not, more pain awaits you. Who killed my mother? Was it you… or your wife?"

Fixating my stare upon Eyzn once again, I eyed him for a few seconds before a stained smile broke out across my features. Incredulously, and almost out of my control, a few chuckles worked their way past my aggravated throat as I watched the quarian begin to fume.

"I'm not telling you shit, tough guy. I think the both of us know that I'm not going to be walking out of here alive, so why should I give you the satisfaction of answering your question?"

Eyzn threw his head back as he laughed raucously before he placed a hand on the top of my head, roughly grasping a fistful of my hair, making my eyes water. "Your luck is better than you think, Sam. To be completely honest, I was debating for a long time whether I should reveal my involvement to you so soon. You see, I have plans. Big plans for the future that… that aren't quite finalized yet. My impatience simply got in the way as I was quite eager to renew our acquaintance. To keep you around until then would be cumbersome and not quite so satisfying. You have my guarantee that you will walk back into your life later today, a free man, but I must stress that things will be considerably more difficult later on if you don't cooperate right now."

I tilted my head, curious. "Going to give me a clue as to how you will make my life difficult if I don't comply?"

"And spoil the surprise? I don't think so. What happens after today is all on you now, Sam. With that in mind, are you still going to be so troublesome?"

I kept my mouth shut and firmly turned my head to the side. I'll never give Eyzn any satisfaction for as long as I lived. I had made that promise to myself a long time ago, cemented after I had been strapped to a gurney by him and mentally tortured for hours. Any answers he could pry out of me would take the most herculean of efforts - I did not intend to capitulate based on vague threats.

Across from me, Eyzn merely shrugged. "So be it. I'm sure you'll see my point of view eventually."

He then reached out toward my left hand, holding it firmly in place. I was a bit too slow on the uptake so I did not realize what Eyzn was doing until it was too late. Eyzn suddenly grabbed my little finger and quickly bent it so far backwards, beyond what was feasible for the joint, that the tiny _snap_ of the finger breaking echoed loudly around the little chamber.

I gave a loud shout of surprise and agony. As Eyzn pulled away I was able to fully view the odd angle that my little finger was bent at. Pain boiled at the ruined joint, making me want to bend it back, which only served to add fuel to the fire and soon I was sucking in air through my clamped jaw as I tried to control my reactions.

"You son of a bitch!" I mustered out.

"That was just a sample of what's to come," Eyzn warned. "I _did_ caution you. Believe me, I've got more tricks up my sleeve that I can dole out. I've got the men. I've got the resources. I have everything I need to shape my reality."

"More like _fantasy_ ," I corrected, my face grim. My finger was raising holy hell at this point and was probably going to turn a magnificent shade of purple and blue in due course. "You truly have gone insane."

"Insanity is merely an abnormality. It is a term that suggests that certain behavioral patterns that are detrimental to society manifest in a vacuum. Oddly enough, if other people can be persuaded to share the same point of view, is it considered insanity at that point or perhaps a simple failure of the groupthink concept? Rules and truths can be easily bent and crafted if you have the right people beside you. And I do happen to have the right people, as a matter of fact." Eyzn made a gesture to someone standing out of sight behind me. "I believe you've already met Vahl."

The sandy-suited quarian girl stepped around my chair, eyes glowering at me in distrust. I similarly returned a disgusted look.

"Unfortunately, I have," I said, remembering the sharp slap. "A bit hot-tempered for my liking, though."

"Big talk for a caged human like you," Vahl snapped. Well, she certainly had a temperament that balanced upon a razor's edge.

"So charming," I muttered before looking at Eyzn. "I have to say, she's certainly your type, buddy."

Vahl noticeably jolted but stilled herself when Eyzn raised a hand. "You should take his words as a compliment," Eyzn spoke to her. "This human tends to mouth off when things aren't exactly going his way. Crude and coarse, this one, but it becomes somewhat of an endearing trait the longer you stick around him."

"I'd rather you not talk about me in an admiring fashion," I grimaced, sweating from the discomfort my finger was causing. "Nor do I particularly care when you bring home the first person you meet from a speed dating seminar."

Eyzn and Vahl glanced at each other in confusion. "I think he believes that we're… _together_ , Vahl," Eyzn simpered.

"Oh?" she mocked. "Very perceptive of him. And completely false."

"But our… current relationship does have some benefits, hmm?"

"Disgusting," I grumbled, the obviousness of the innuendos grating upon me.

My finger was now throbbing even harder and sweat was starting to trickle down my brow as the pain became more evident as time went on. I still kept my composure, not wanting to see that Eyzn had caught me off guard, that he could find any weaknesses in my armor.

Another figure then walked around the other side of my chair, this one dressed in a skintight black commando suit. Another female, if the curves weren't a clear giveaway, but what was interesting about this new arrival is that they were the first non-quarian that I had seen in this place. The scaly blue skin was the most obvious feature that separated the asari from the other quarians, aside from the fact that asari also had no need to wear masks over their faces as their immune systems were considerably more adept at combating diseases and infections than quarians.

Like Vahl, I had never seen this person before in my life. Her skin was a deep royal blue and she had a few faint, black-ish markings that were delicately painted around her eyes. She was a couple inches shorter than me, slender, but probably older than me by about at least a century. Asari could live for as long as a millennium and this one did not look all that old, but she did not appear to be some combat-eager youth, either. How this one managed to get mixed up in Eyzn's business was a pretty big mystery, all things considered.

It then occurred to me that the hand that I had seen, the one belonging to the person who ended up putting me in a chokehold before tasing me, was most likely this person's right here - this asari. Vahl had been the decoy while this blue bitch had landed the blow.

"Sievra here has been loyal to me for a good long while," Eyzn introduced, most likely with a smug smile behind that mask of his. The asari was similarly flushed in pleasure. "She has a very deft touch with all the assignments that she's carried out on my behalf."

"Does she speak?" I drawled, trying my best to sound bored. "Or does she only bark on command?"

Instead of jumping to the taunt like Vahl would have, Sievra did not appear to be so easily goaded. She simply arched an eyebrow (or what amounted to one for an asari) and made a slight glance at Eyzn next to her. The fact that he returned the glance back allowed me to create an association between the two - a notion so out there, but as of yet undeniable.

"He's much less impressive than I figured," she said to Eyzn. "More foolish, as well."

"Indeed," Eyzn agreed.

I just shook my head, dumbfounded. "God, you sure do meet the weirdos in this job, Eyzn. How hypocritical of you, to consort with aliens when you previously derided me for doing so."

Sievra just smirked. " _Please_. You're not exactly a shining paragon yourself, from what Eyzn has told me."

"I never denied that. How much is that asshole paying you, anyway? Why join him?"

"Why do you ask?" Sievra snorted. "You offering to double it?"

"Nope. I just want to know how much prostitutes are going for these days. I've been out of the loop for a bit."

I was definitely pushing my luck by conjuring these biting insults, but at least Sievra had more self-control than her cohorts. She just rolled her eyes while Eyzn chuckled to himself nearby, quite entertained at the spectacle he had set up for himself.

"You never learn, do you, Sam? I had heard that Sievra managed to sneak up on you quite easily while you were distracted. You'll want to watch out for her - she has a great deal of infiltration and espionage action under her belt. Vahl, despite her appearance, is my muscle. You'll certainly have your guard up next time - it'll make things all the more interesting."

"Save it," I savagely replied, ultimately fed up. "I've got bigger things to worry about than you losers. Just skip the rest of the pleasantries and get to the fucking point, if you haven't gotten there yet."

Nya. My daughter. Our future. So many things to think about. Eyzn and his cronies were only complicating things even further, to my dismay. How many problems could I juggle before I was finally burnt out? I was already nearing my own edge of insanity, after what had happened. This was just the last thing that I needed - a crazy relative out for revenge. I must be the unluckiest bastard in the galaxy.

Eyzn laughed and waved a hand magnanimously. "You are quite right that you have bigger things to worry about. That's why I saved this last individual in the first place. Step forward."

At first I thought Eyzn was talking to me and making a cruel quip, but I soon heard a pair of heavyset feet clomp their way behind me. They pounded the floor, shaking the chair that I sat in until the vibrations stopped just behind me, the soft whir of servos and machinery flitting into my ears.

Timidly, I looked up and found myself completely shadowed by one of the largest entities I had ever seen. The bipedal form was at least a couple feet taller than me, nonorganic, its armor colored blood-red. The black cords of synthetic muscle popped in the thin gaps between the protective coverings as a mass of tubes crisscrossed this way and that from jutting ports upon its chest, calves, and back. A trio of optics stared impassively down upon me - three dark red lamps that bathed me in a hot light while an overpowering swerving sort of noises emitted from its vocal receptors as it took in the sight of me.

A geth. A prime, to be exact.

I had never seen a geth other than Sagan before, especially not a prime. This particular specimen was at least twelve feet high and a good half a foot wider than my friend. The prime's hands looked like it could crush my head with ease and it could certainly outrun me with those gigantic legs, bent in the same awkward orientation as its creators. My jaw became agape a couple times as I struggled to form words while the prime walked over to where Eyzn was standing. The quarian crossed his arms, obviously pleased with himself as his little "team" was now fully assembled for me to take in.

"Impressed?" Eyzn sneered.

"Hardly," I snorted, trying to appear impassive as much as I could. Not so easy when you're a captive. "How the hell did you convince a geth to be on your side? You're no friend to them."

Eyzn laughed. "Convincing was never on the table. You think I _talked_ to this geth - _persuaded_ it to join me? Keelah, Sam. You are incredibly naive as to how the galaxy operates. If you must know, your little expedition on Rannoch helped uncover dozens of vaults containing intact, albeit deactivated, geth all over the world for someone to drop in and visit. You helped my people unlock some of the keys to their past… but you also provided us weapons, if we were so inclined to use them. The geth, our spawn. If someone happened to know the exact location of one of these vaults, and had the technical know-how to activate a geth and reprogram it, then… well, the result is standing right in front of you. A lot less talkative than the one you encountered on the homeworld, but this one obeys my every command. Take a look."

The quarian turned to the prime and snapped his fingers once. The prime swiveled in place to directly face Eyzn, once again giving the same swerving sequence of notes as its vocalization.

"Geth, bow," Eyzn commanded.

The prime complied, executing a smooth, fluid motion that was unmistakably a bow. Centuries of freedom from their creators, yet this geth was once again trapped to perform the bidding of a madman.

"Kneel."

The geth did as it was told without question, yet even kneeling it was barely taller than Eyzn or myself. No hesitation. No inkling of rebellious actions.

Not a hint of a soul.

"Rise."

The prime obeyed.

"Stand on one foot."

It did so, to the visible amusement of its master.

"You see, Sam?" Eyzn turned to me, his eyes glinting with cruel malice. "Complete obedience."

I did not need to be prodded. I had eyes. I could see firsthand for myself the extent of Eyzn's reach. The prime, emotionless, had been yanked from its primary purpose to be a slave to this fanatic. It could not feel, not even consider the horrible life ahead of it. In the hands of this quarian, this prime would never attain the soul that all geth intrinsically searched for.

"You didn't give it a name," I said, dread continuing to claw at me.

"Now why would I do that?" Eyzn mocked as he rapped his knuckles upon the prime's chestplate. "It's a geth following its original programming: to serve _us_. I am its Creator and to give it a name other than its designation is pointless. It responds to 'Geth' and that is enough."

Eyzn then plodded over to me, steeping his hands as he bided his time carefully. "I can see that you remain unconvinced, uncertain of what I intend to do. No matter. Like I said, you'll find out soon enough. At least from now on you'll always have an itch in the back of your head - a little notion that somewhere, somehow, I'll always be watching you. You'll be driven insane by it and it will lead you to me again in due time. I'm not ready to impart all my hatred upon you quite yet. I can always torment you from afar until then."

I scowled as Eyzn stood uncomfortably close to me, trying not to wince as the quarian lifted a hand and gave my cheek a gentle caress, much different than the callousness he demonstrated while breaking my finger in half. Air rushed from my nostrils loudly and I almost considered taking a big chomp out of the quarian's hand should it stray too close, just to see if I could annoy him.

"And… like _I_ said," I croaked out, trampling my inner anarchist, "you'll have to get in line. I've got other torments pressing upon me right now."

Eyzn nodded in disinterest. "Of course, of course. I can understand that a broken family might be weighted more heavily than a distant relative's desire for revenge. A dead daughter would be quite hard for me to top, I would imagine."

I jerked in the chair at the callousness of Eyzn mentioning my daughter to me, which only caused him to laugh.

"You've never been more vulnerable than you are now, Sam. You cannot even hope to hide your weaknesses from me. Your guilt, your despair, they're the tools I need to make my revenge complete."

"Right," I said, unconvinced. "You're only going to fuck everything up in the end, much like you did last time."

The quarian only seemed more amused at that. "You might be surprised, Sam. This time, I've made sure to work everything out. Alas, if I say any more I might spoil the fun, and I want to savor this as much as possible."

Eyzn then held out his hand and Vahl quickly tossed him the bag that had been used to blind me at the beginning of this trip. He caught it with a deft flair, managing to amble around well, despite being maimed.

"Don't worry," Eyzn said as he opened the bag wide, preparing to shove it over my head. "Everything will make sense by the end."

"Eat shit and die," I managed to spit out before the covering was rudely crammed over my face, muffling my words from here on out.

* * *

After spending what seemed like an eternity with nothing but blackness to stare at, I pretty much zoned out almost immediately after I had been bagged again. Was Eyzn going to fulfil his promise with letting me go? Highly unlikely, but he did seem confident in his reasoning, yet I was strangely disconnected with regards to my safety once the world had been shut away from me, at peace with my fate should the end come to pass. I had actually become so complacent to my change in scenery (or lack thereof) that I was not paying attention all that well when I was being carted around the makeshift lair, forced to walk for short periods of time through hallway after hallway, followed by quick sessions of sitting back down once more.

All that came to an end when, after I had been seated in one chair for maybe five minutes did I hear a noise to my right, like a door opening, and I felt someone rudely shove my side, sending me sprawling out of the seat.

I fell a couple feet through the air and landed painfully on my side. My broken finger brushed the ground and I bellowed as it felt like bone was grinding against bone within my hand. The bag atop my head had been loosened slightly and I was able to raise my bound wrists and yank it off my head. I then saw that the skycar that I had been unceremoniously deposited out of hovered just next to me clear off the ground, the door wide open after I had been dropped off.

Vahl, in the rearward passenger seat and most likely the person who did the shoving, leaned forward and tapped a control on her omni-tool tauntingly. With a whir and a quick flash of light, the cuffs around my wrists and ankles disappeared without a trace.

"We'll be seeing you… _Sam_ ," Vahl mocked before Sievra closed the door to the craft, allowing them to rocket away.

Finally, I was alone.

"Fuck you!" I hollered at the fleeing pair as I hurled the bag to the ground in frustration as I stood up, my knee joints yowling as they were allowed to straighten after being bent for a time. I watched the skycar turn past a large pylon in the distance before disappearing out of sight into the traffic lanes that floated a mile above my head.

I turned on the spot, trying to determine where I was. Well… I was still on the Citadel, at the very least, but not in a part of the station that I had been before. This place was abandoned, still carrying signs of damage from the war, a darkened avenue with empty storefronts lining the walkway. Next to me I could see across a cavernous gap that led to a row of shiny office buildings, but the individuals inside would never think to look out their windows at the tiny people roaming the grounds below them.

So, illuminated by the glow of the planet and the scattered diorama of office lights, I hobbled towards what I figured was the best way toward a populated area, only to give up after five minutes after my shoddy exploration revealed nothing of substance.

Well, at least I knew why I had been dropped off here. No witnesses to any misdeeds would be beneficial to the aspiring miscreant, especially in such a sparse area such as this.

Finding a bench, I had an idea as I gratefully sat down upon it. I engaged my omni-tool and initiated a call with one of my contacts.

" _Samuel?_ " Sagan's voice burst through the comm. " _We had lost contact with you for a couple hours. Is your condition all right?_ "

"About as well as could be expected," I managed as I turned my attention to my little finger, which was still bent at a crappy angle. "I kind of ran into trouble for a bit. Hold on a second, I've got to do something."

Sagan was silent on the other end while I gently wrapped my hand around my ruined finger, already feeling bolts of electricity shoot from the joint whenever it wiggled in any direction. I took several quick, deep breaths as I prepared myself for the next move. Screwing up my face in anticipation, I gritted my teeth as I yanked my hand down, popping the broken finger back into place with a hideous _crackle_.

"RRRRGGGHHH!" I thundered, my voice echoing maniacally amongst the glass canyon. How could so much pain erupt from one tiny appendage?! My finger went numb immediately, the rest of the discomfort spreading all throughout my hand eagerly. "Goddamn sonuvabitch!"

" _Samuel?_ " Sagan asked in concern. " _What is wrong?_ "

I panted for a few moments, hunched over while I willed the pain to fade. As soon as I was able, I raised myself back up and wiped my brow with a shaking hand.

"Haah… haah… a lot, Sagan. A lot of things are wrong right now, a broken finger notwithstanding."

" _If possible, stay where you are. If you provide me with your location I can arrive with medical attention_."

"You read my mind," I smiled, despite myself. I flexed the fingers of my hand carefully, trying not to bend my purplish little finger quite so much, but at least it could be bent now. "But you can forget the medical attention. Just grab a med kit from the bathroom and bring it with you, that will do me fine. Uploading coordinates now."

" _Acknowledged_ ," the geth transmitted. " _Coordinates received_. _Prepare for pickup in four point three minutes._ "

"Wonderful. But don't take us home just yet. There's one stop that I want to make and I've got some bad news for you. I'll explain in the car."

There was a noticeable pause over the line, which meant that the geth was figuring out exactly how to respond to this vague information.

" _This is a new conflict that has occurred, correct? Or does this correspond with the discord that you share with Creator McLe-_ ,"

"No!" I said loudly into the comm, before the geth could voice her name fully. "No, it's… I… I don't know. I don't think so. Just, forget her for now, okay? Like I said, I'll explain later. Right now I need you to take me elsewhere."

" _We will acquiesce_. _Which destination would you like to travel to, Samuel?_ "

I stood from the bench as I heard the familiar whine of a skycar approach my position, wind beginning to ruffle at my slightly bloodstained clothes.

"The embassy. The human embassy."

* * *

The attaché finally set his pen down after he had been spinning it in his hand ever since we had been ushered in the room. He gave a sympathetic smile and gave a meek shrug that did not really befit a man of his position.

"I'm sorry, Mr. McLeod. From what I've heard of your case, and I've considered all the details, I've determined that there's not much we can do for you here."

I blinked, certain that I had misheard the man. Ever so slowly, I leaned forward in the chair that sat across the desk in one of the embassy's many offices, and fixated the man with a cold stare.

" _Doctor_ ," I corrected, speaking deliberately and menacingly, making sure to emphasize each syllable clearly. " _Doctor_ McLeod. I believe you're going to have to run that by me again… _Mr_. Kordun. What _exactly_ can't you do here?"

I had been in a bad mood even before Sagan and I had walked in the embassy's doors. Getting temporarily kidnapped by an old enemy does tend to heighten adrenaline levels every now and then - something to be expected. My little finger was sporting a splint, procured from the medical kit that Sagan had dutifully brought with him when he picked me up. A tiny injection of medi-gel was working at my broken finger and I figured that it should be fully healed by tomorrow morning at the latest. A bit of discomfort today was infinitely more preferable to the old-fashioned method of waiting a month for bone to mend. Nevertheless, it only added to my foul temper today.

Upon arrival at the embassy, I was of course prepared for the certainty that is the bane of the harried individual: queuing. Embassies are notorious for their unbelievably long lines and slow processing times. Of course, improvements had been made to such an archaic system to prevent needless lingering given 150-plus years of progress, but it still felt like valuable time was being wasted with each passing minute that I had to spend waiting in a chair. It was almost worth it to observe the reactions from passersby as they figured out that I was sitting next to a geth, as many people were still perturbed with the notion of allowing what few synthetics were left to roam freely. Sagan did not seem to care in the slightest and the attitudes of the fleeting strangers would all eventually relax once they saw that the geth did not mean them any harm. Still, it gave me some small amusement.

Although the entire wait might not have been worth it at all, considering the kind of help that I was getting when I was eventually called into an attaché's office. A Mr. Kordun, a rather short, slender man with a pencil-thin mustache, ran through the usual pleasantries and mindless chit chat as we proceeded to seat ourselves across from the other with a thin, silvery desk separating us. The man's office had a nice view out into the Presidium, viewing the gardened offices and the meticulously maintained ponds down below, yet it paled in comparison to the kinds of views one could get back on Earth.

I had run through the broad strokes of my encounter with Eyzn to Kordun, making sure to omit any sensitive details that weren't necessary for him to hear, such as the nature of my relationship with the quarian and to my rather checkered past involving him. Kordun just smiled and nodded throughout the whole spiel, giving me the impression that this was not going as well as I thought, despite what I was divulging.

Then, of course, he told me that there was nothing he could do with the situation.

"It's like this, Dr. McLeod," Kordun sighed as he rubbed at his temples. "Your position is extremely tricky, from a legal standpoint. From what you described, you were apparently kidnapped by a quarian, one who goes by Eyzn'Kannos… no current ship association, the explanation of which you gave was that he was an exile. So this man captures you, threatens you for a bit and just… lets you go. Did he take anything of value from your person? Or is there anything else that you know of that could tie him to a charge that you might find a bit more permanent?"

"No to both," I grumbled as I ran a hand through my hair. "I was subject to a bit of light assault here and there, but I know that that's not going to be enough to put him behind bars."

"You mean like your finger there?"

"Yeah, that," I tried to wiggle the damaged digit, earning a wince. "But no lasting injuries from him."

Kordun's face sagged slightly and he did a bit of quick typing into his console. "You had mentioned that the Rannochian government turned him over to C-Sec a couple years back, yet I don't see his record on any database."

"I was wondering that myself. I have a theory that C-Sec probably didn't know what to do with him and just turned him loose after a short while."

"It's notoriously tricky to deal with quarians in C-Sec," Kordun offered as he tried to give a helpful smile. "From a purely pragmatic standpoint, quarians offer a host of challenges whenever you try to compile them into something as simple as a database, especially from such a universal body like C-Sec. Quarians are suited all the time and their helmets are known for being resistant to invasive scans, so facial scanning for ID is useless, not to mention that most of their suits use standardized parts so that almost all of them look very much identical. And that's not a racist stereotype - it's a legitimate gripe shared by most law enforcements. Try picking the right perp out of a lineup of quarians and see how you fare. Quarians also have a tendency to change their ship name a lot, so that means that a lot of the records that we have access to are outdated in a matter of months. To make things even more difficult, they are also furiously careful when it comes to any procedures that necessitate intrusion into their suits - they generally do not allow officials to draw blood, despite the fact that their suits have a function that allows this to proceed quite safely. Yet if an officer tries to do so, most quarians are savvy enough to call for a lawyer, citing the safety of their personal health. And let me tell you, lawyers _love_ having quarians as clients."

"How so?"

"Because a quarian will usually bring a case against C-Sec that is going to be an open-and-shut argument in the plaintiff's favor. There are many lawyers on the Citadel that love sticking it to the cops, to slap the hands of the law when they try to greedily draw from the cookie jar. If a C-Sec officer tries to force their way into a quarian's suit just to draw a vial of blood, I can say from my experience that C-Sec will never be able to muster a defense that results in a win for them. They've spent thousands upon thousands of credits just settling out of court with quarians - it's a cash cow."

Kordun glanced back at his monitor again and shook his head grimly. "I hate to say it, but it looks like that C-Sec is either extremely sloppy with keeping their records up-to-date, or that they're trying to limit their exposure to a lawsuit by jailing quarians. You also said that you saw a fair amount of quarians in this warehouse when you were captured?"

"Dozens," I nodded. "But that's not going to matter much, is it?"

"Look, Sam," Kordun pushed away his monitor and adopted a serious expression, all initial levity forgotten. "From the embassy's standpoint we're focused on protecting the rights of humans who live and work here on the Citadel, yet our reach is still tenuous at best when dealing with crimes that take place on the station. From what you described, it is not in the Consular's interest to intervene in what would fall under C-Sec's jurisdiction as the crime that was committed against you would be considered so minor that no action would be taken for a long time, if at all."

I felt my face grow hot and I must have made some sort of grimace because even Sagan took a miniscule glance at me in worry as I tried to process this information.

"So assault, kidnapping, and terrorism wouldn't exactly rate on their radar, huh? All this for a problem that _they_ caused by not keeping this maniac in their custody?"

"It's less simple than that, I'm afraid. While the charges you listed technically all apply to your case, it was the fact that you were let go voluntarily that is going to negate the importance of that for C-Sec. They're already up to their eyeballs with the usual fare that they come across, not to mention there's the political aspect to consider."

"Great," I groaned. "And what might that entail?"

"I don't know if you've been reading the news lately, but a lot of the major publications have been getting their hands on more and more evidence related to the quotas that C-Sec has set up in their divisions. The public is a bit perturbed at some of the arrest statistics that they've been seeing and a lot of signs show that many C-Sec officers have been exercising a fair amount of prejudice against certain races, namely quarians. Put simply, C-Sec is not going to follow up on this case for a good long while because, if what you say is true, then a matter like this will leave them no choice but to carry out a mass arrest of quarian nationals. I can say right now that such a move will not go unnoticed by the general public and this will bring even more negative publicity to C-Sec, even if they are doing it for the right reasons."

In disbelief, I let out a wheezing laugh, one that seemed to disturb everyone else in the room as I blithely shook my head.

"Wow. _Wow_. You guys are actually telling me to go fuck myself, aren't you? I mean, god forbid that the cops get some bad publicity lathered onto them - if I get murdered in a back alley that will be the price to pay, right?"

Kordun stood, his face aghast. "I assure you, Dr. McLeod, that I am in no way turning you back out onto the street. I am simply saying that, with the provided evidence, there is little that can be done here on the Citadel. If you seriously believe that your life is in danger, I can arrange to have you placed in protective custody-,"

"Fuck the protective custody," I spat as I too stood, pushing my chair aside. Sagan rose as well, his lens fixated upon me. "I'm not running from this son of a bitch. I've got things to do here and WitSec will only set me back. Thank you _so much_ for your help today, Mr. Kordon. I daresay that I won't be returning in the near future, alive or dead."

Leaving a sputtering Kordun in the dust, I wheeled about and stormed right out of the office, Sagan right at my heels. As we headed out of the embassy and onto one of the Presidum's many bridges spanning the luxurious ponds, I found myself fuming and even angrier than I was at the start of the day.

I clenched a fist repeatedly, noting that I had been entertaining the idea of just punching the meek Kordun in the face multiple times when he was talking to me. No real reason for the surge in anger, I just felt like hitting someone, to pound the nearest person into jelly. Kordun just happened to be the closest person, the hapless sap, fixated in my crosshairs. In the back of my mind, this scared me. My anger was always something I reserved for the people who wronged me, so why was it that I was imparting it upon a nobody like Kordun? He was a bureaucrat, tied down to his post by layers upon layers of red tape and restrictive management. He was nothing to me, yet I almost levelled him with a level of fury unwarranted to a man of his stature.

Taking a moment to breathe and control myself, I stopped in the middle of the walkway, and looked out across the man-made lakes, imagining that the sterile air I was breathing in as fresh as an Earth forest, layers upon layers of skycars screaming across the simulated sky, the implemented lighting failing to warm my skin, ever reminding me of the station's artificiality.

Glancing at Sagan behind me, I briefly looked down as I consolidated my thoughts.

"You think I could have handled that differently." It was not a question.

"Kordun-Consulate could have provided you with valuable assistance," Sagan offered, his tone neutral as always but I could tell that the geth was disappointed in me.

"' _Could'_ being the operative word," I pointed out as I turned to lean my back against the guardrail. "Kordun's a pencil-pusher. He wouldn't have the authority to get me the help I need. I'll only face the same outcome if I try to go to C-Sec directly. I just don't have enough proof to get this bastard. Heh, Eyzn had to have known this would happen. He wouldn't have let me go otherwise."

"What do you mean?" Sagan asked.

Thoughtfully, I cupped my chin. "Eyzn isn't stupid. Impulsive maybe, but not a blithering idiot. He knew that I would try to solicit the authorities for help… and he probably had a good idea that I would be refused in turn, repeatedly stonewalled. If he didn't, it wouldn't make sense that he would release me from his clutches… when he had me _right there_ at his mercy. Yet… that's what's worrying me."

"Because he let you go?"

"Exactly. Why do that at all? He said that he wasn't 'ready' for me yet, which means that he has a plan to catch up to me in the future. He's toying with me, is what this is. The only problem is that I don't see the advantage of doing so. Eyzn's got something up his sleeve, I know it. I... just don't know what it is."

I glanced back out into the Presidium for a second, letting my attention wander to the tiny people scurrying around the edges of the lakes, all caught up in their insignificant thoughts. Outlines of beings from all across the galaxy merged into the crowds - one big multicolored pot, teeming of life. Every one of them harboring demons of their own, each keeping records of their biggest regrets. Not a one of them could be aware of the trials bearing down on me, but as a group, all were unworthy of consideration from each other.

If I truly wanted, I would not even have to imagine very hard… to glimpse a crimson hood atop a grayish-black helmet, its visor also adorned with the color of blood, as a face amongst the crowd. It would be easy to picture the lithe form glide through the sea of people, eyes glowing passionately, warmly. Her voice would naturally fill my ear, her fingers lightly brushing my arm…

" _I can't stop thinking about her…_ " I whispered to myself as I let my forehead touch the railing, my own hands clenching at the barrier helplessly, knuckles straining with the effort and my lame pinky jutting out awkwardly.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened back up and adjusted the neck of my shirt, nostrils flaring as I strove to control myself. It would be so easy just to scream out loud, to let loose in this expanse. I wanted to do it. I wanted to yell to the heavens, curse my luck, damn those that I-

"Samuel?" Sagan's voice pierced the void I had put up around myself. "Your body temperature is spiking again."

"That so?" I croaked with a sarcastic grit, indeed noting that I was still out of breath and a little flustered. I cracked my neck before I faced the geth. "What, you think I should see a doctor?"

"The ludicrousness of that statement implies that you do not expect an answer from me," Sagan sounded unamused.

That caused me to crack the barest of grins, at least. "Who says you're incapable of understanding organics?" I said.

"You do consistently take it upon yourself to insinuate that we should make an effort to observe organic behavior, after all."

"Point taken," I mused. "Okay, so here's the deal. If my people and C-Sec aren't going to be of any use, I'm going to have to do this myself. Or… if you want to tag along…"

Sagan stiffened, almost as if he was insulted at the hint. "We will not remain idle while your life is threatened, Samuel. We will gladly assist, should you wish it."

I grinned widely as I slapped the shoulder of the geth in appreciation. "What would I do without you? It'll be harder to gang up on two people instead of one, but I don't want to take any chances. We need to find out what Eyzn is up to and I'm not really keen on going back to him to press him for more answers."

"Logic would dictate that we should seek out an individual familiar with Eyzn's behavioral patterns."

"Right. We need someone who was close to Eyzn at one point, who knows him better than we do."

Optics whirred and the geth rotated his minor lens a few degrees as he adjusted his aperture.

"There is _only_ one person who fits that profile," Sagan said. "Unless you happen to be aware of another?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's the problem. There's no one else to go to. I know who you're talking about… and I… well, I'd rather not see him at all. Hell, he'd probably want to see _me_ a lot less."

Sagan he raised his omni-tool so that I could glance at what he had procured. "There is no one else, Samuel. If we wish to discover more about Creator Kannos' intentions, this is the only individual that could have adequate knowledge. He is still residing on the Citadel at this very moment."

"Yeah, right where we left him," I murmured, a bleak look washing over my face as I studied the map that Sagan had brought up. Just a five minute flight away from where we were standing. Convenient, yet foreboding. I would rather not be going down this path, but when you're left little choice, what more can be done? Besides, I needed to know everything about Eyzn as possible, even if it meant digging up a few graves. "Very well. If we're to pay _him_ a visit, then it would probably be in our best interests to go as soon as possible."

"Right now?" Sagan clarified.

"Yes, _now_ ," I emphasized by prodding Sagan's yellow armor with a finger as I began to hustle off the walkway, shoving past a rowdy crew of youthful turians while I turned back to call out to the following geth. "Call a car. Input the destination as the wards of the fifth arm, third district. We're seeing this bastard right _now_."

* * *

 **A/N: We're getting this ball rolling now! I did say that Sam's life will take a turn for the worse soon. And I'm not done yet!**

 **We've got a long way to go, so strap in and make yourselves comfortable. This is going to get rather bumpy.**

 **If you think I'm going to lighten this story up anytime soon... think again.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Eyzn's Reunion: "Wallace" by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer from the film _Blade Runner 2049_**


	5. Idyll II: The Elder

_Four months later  
Location: Unknown  
Status: __CONTINUUM RESUMED_

Ahrun could only watch in a combination of admiration and astonishment as the human lying down in a supine position upon the bench in front of him kept on pushing up the bulky weights in a steady rhythm, softly huffing and puffing away. The human, although he was breathing hard, did not utter a curse or a word of complaint. His skin was beginning to turn a brighter shade of pink and sweat was starting to spring up, soaking his tank top, but his overall form and tempo showed no other signs of fatigue. Ahrun unconsciously felt a little more impotent as he stared at his own arms, mere twigs compared to this human's. Even though he was of a different race than the human, he couldn't help but be a little jealous at the potential for strength that most humans could access with time and effort.

The human, Ahto Da'var, kept his face set and jaw clenched as he worked the barbell, loaded with large, round, and circular weights. Ahrun did not know exactly the conversion metric between the units quarians and humans each used, but he could make an educated guess that the 210 pounds of mass that Da'var was currently lifting translated to a large amount in the equivalent amount of force, for quarian standards of course.

The young quarian found it particularly odd that this strange prison contained a litany of equipment dedicated to facilitate a workout. He had never actually visited a prison before so he had no idea what to expect. Ahrun figured that his captors had to realize that the offered weights could be utilized as effective weapons if someone had the brilliant idea to stage a resistance here. A bulky weight bar could crack open a quarian's visor in one vicious blow. Da'var had realized this too and had explained to Ahrun yesterday that his guess was that the equipment had already resided here when it had been obtained by the new management and no efforts had been made to cart it away since no one had ever thought of misusing it before. The human also mused that the people who had imprisoned them had done a bit of research regarding the psychology of captives and had left the exercise equipment for them to use as a way to divert their attentions from more seditious thoughts.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop, Da'var had proclaimed. Best to offer a distraction in some form rather than let mutiny spread like wildfire. Yet pretty much all of the quarians chose not to avail themselves to the offered apparatus, leaving it all for Da'var to play with. He certainly was not complaining.

The quarian could see the effects of the weight training that were already taking effect upon the human. Da'var's triceps looked to be more defined, as did the areas of his chest and shoulders. Veins in his neck and on the sides of his face stood out, dark against the light-shaded backdrop. His arms shook lightly as they extended themselves out without locking, the weight still clenched furiously in a two-handed grip.

This had been the human's fourth set with using these weights in this session, Ahrun had noted. Da'var had been a little ambivalent as to how many reps he wanted to define within a set and had set to working out without voicing his schedule out loud. The quarian just came to expect that the human stopped a set whenever he felt like it - it was all decided as to his current mood and his feelings toward his strengths at the time.

Ahrun was only here in the corner because Da'var had asked him to be his "spotter," whatever that meant. Apparently his informal duty was to stand on watch and make sure that Da'var didn't make a mistake and accidentally drop the barbell onto his neck. Ahrun sincerely doubted that such an event would come to pass, but dreaded the possibility for he knew that he had none of the qualities that made a good spotter. For one, he didn't think that he possessed the upper body strength to heft a barbell with such a significant amount of weight attached to it. Da'var had to have known that - maybe he just appreciated a bit of company while he worked out. He never did talk during these sessions, as he probably found solace with Ahrun's presence.

It was hard for Ahrun to figure out exactly what made Da'var tick. It had been two days since he had been deposited into this oddity of a jail, two days since he had met the human that had been his savior, and even though that he occasionally plied the quarian with tidbits concerning his overall backstory, there were still significant gaps that Da'var had yet to cover.

How did he come to be here?

Did he ever get the chance to reconcile with his wife?

What was his real name?

Da'var grunted and Ahrun looked down to see the human hefting the barbell back onto the racks, finished with his workout. Remembering what he was supposed to do, Ahrun helped guide the barbell to safety, letting it settle onto the firm metal protrusions, sparing the human's muscles from the painful conditioning. After a few moments, Da'var finally sat up, wiping away the sweat that clung to the back of his neck. He used the hem of his dark tank top to bead at his forehead, the bulging cords of muscles along his arms making him seem more sculpted. The human scratched at his cropped beard, taking several deep breaths as he turned sideways on the bench, contemplating silently to himself.

Seemingly considering Ahrun for the first time, Da'var nudged his head in the direction of the barbell.

"Want a turn? You've got about fifteen minutes before the first meal is served."

Rather timidly, Ahrun looked at the barbell with the composure of a mouse being made to bell a cat. There were smaller weights to be attached that were scattered rather haphazardly near the range of workout equipment, but all of them looked so foreign to Ahrun, so alien, that they could have been medieval torture devices for all he knew. Besides, Ahrun never had the opportunity to experience the abridgement of time when the brain is focused on a workout before, so that facet was lost on him.

It was not like Ahrun was looking forward to eating either, but his grumbling stomach told him to muster through his pride and take whatever he could get. Whoever had set up this enormity had installed a station along the wall at their left along one of the cube's featureless walls, a little outlet that sent tubes of food down a vacuum tube for the rest of the quarians milling in the large expanse to take. The prisoners had to eat, evidently. There were two tubes that dispensed food: one that supplied the dextro stock, and one for levo since Da'var would be poisoned if he tried to eat anything comprised of dextro amino-acids. In contrast, there was only one vacuum tube to suck up the empty canisters after finishing the meals.

The food itself was particularly awful. Nutrient paste was pretty bad by itself but this blend left a disgusting aftertaste in its wake and it tended to have a watery consistency near the top of the canister, which made for a horrible first slurp. Da'var looked like he was not having it any better, because even though he could actually eat physical food without needlessly risking his immune system, their captors gave him nutrient paste anyway and, judging by his expressions, it too was not particularly palatable to the human. Everyone choked the swill down anyway.

Aside from Da'var taking occasional breaks to explain his general predicament and life story, nothing of particular interest had taken place over the past two days. No one had tried to bully Ahrun since then at least - after Da'var had gotten himself personally involved in the last fracas, everyone had seemed to wise up immensely and steer clear of the human and whoever he happened to socialize with. Besides, with the shape that this human was in, why would anyone challenge him at all? He could probably break any one of the quarians in here in half, given the opportunity.

Yet Da'var's story breaks were not enough to fill in the immense gaps of extreme boredom that gripped everyone with lethargy. This prison did not offer much in the way of amenities, except rather bizarrely, this weight station that was lodged in the corner and Ahrun had seen no quarians use it. Everyone mostly existed in their own private bubbles, clumped themselves into groups or sat themselves on benches in the next room over to mindlessly converse. Space was a commodity that everyone had here in spades. Ahrun guessed that the interior of this building had to be large enough to permit a fair-sized cruiser in this open space. Perhaps not a battleship, but definitely at least a frigate.

Remembering that Da'var had just asked him a question, Ahrun snapped out of his daze to give a polite shake of his head.

"No, thank you. I… I'm fine with waiting."

Da'var shrugged. "Suit yourself. No one else uses the damn thing anyway."

The human stood and cracked his knuckles as he rolled his neck, eliciting frightful pops from various joints. Ahrun jerked as each little snap resounded, which allowed a ghost of a smile to flicker across Da'var's face, knowing that the little physical routine seemed harsh and barbaric to the quarian. After performing a few windmills with his arms, Da'var dropped to the ground and began to do push-ups, causing the muscles of his back to ripple with the movement of his arms.

Ahrun crouched, eyeing the human. "Why do this, Da'var?" His voice, although soft, carried quite easily within the cavernous interior of the prison.

"Do… what?" Da'var grunted in between breaths, once he reached the zenith of each push-up.

" _This_. Working your body. What is the point of doing such a thing?"

Da'var sighed as he gradually lowered himself onto his elbows after a few reps of not saying anything. He panted for a moment before looking up at Ahrun.

"Is exercise not a pastime in quarian culture?"

"We sometimes do standard strength conditioning, like manipulating precise gravity fields in training pods to help our bodies adjust to different environments, that kind of stuff."

"Not the same thing," Da'var grimaced as he rolled onto his back, throwing himself into a new drill of sit-ups. "Artificial conditioning is no match to the real thing. Maybe the reason you don't do it is because you guys have much higher metabolisms compared to humans. Your skin temperatures are lower yet your circulatory systems beat faster. I'd guess that any muscle tissue that you do accumulate atrophies at an exponentially faster rate than us."

Da'var did not talk again until he finished his set, more sweat soaking his clothes. "Besides," he muttered as he wiped his brow, "I might as well take advantage of my free time. Who knows if all this exercise might come in handy one day?"

Ahrun blinked, hardly daring to believe it. "You really think that you'll escape this place?"

The human managed a shaky, almost serene, grin. "No clue. But it's like this - if the opportunity for me to make a getaway reveals itself, then I'll be thankful that I put in all this effort. Keeping myself primed in preparation for my one moment might just be the very thing that keeps me alive."

His eyes focused, Da'var grasped onto the bench while he started to do some lunges, straining his hamstrings past the limit. Ahrun could see the human's knuckles clasp tighter and tighter upon the bench as he stretched, and the quarian could very well imagine that Da'var just might be able to indent the strong steel if he managed to grip it any harder. Ahrun silently marveled at the sheer adaptability of humans in general - if any one of them had the potential to build themselves up like Da'var, then it was a no-brainer why many of the galaxy's foremost scientists considered them to be the dominant race in this era. This hunger, the speed at which they learned, was astonishing. For humans could tap into the well of dark energy that made the asari so renowned, instill themselves handedly with a turian's discipline, immerse themselves into a specialized trade as wholly as a quarian, and could wage war as effectively as a krogan. Truly a chameleonic and diverse species, collectively unfazed by the changing galaxy around them.

As he was doing this, a resounding siren pierced the general thrum effused by the lingering crowd and two hovering drones dropped from the rafters overhead. They were cylindrical, floating from the miniaturized mass effect generators embedded on their backs, a quartet of oddly-shaped optics funneling their limited views into their constrained circuits. The drones ambled above the crowd, moving quite slowly as they meandered in an aimless pattern.

"What's going on?" Ahrun asked Da'var.

Da'var's eyes tracked the drones, slowly squinting. "Judgment time."

Before Ahrun could respond, the drones abruptly dropped down a couple more feet and, from underneath where the multiple lens were installed shot a thick purple beam, enveloping two of the quarians in the crowd seemingly at random. The aliens looked confused as they were surrounded in the shimmering barrier and frantically tried to move, only to find that all motor functions had been suppressed from the energy field. They began shouting in panic, hoping that one of their cohorts might come to rescue them, but all the quarians instead backed away, leaving the two to their fates. Not a one even so much as twitched towards the two in a brave yet foolhardy attempt to save them. Instant capitulation, all feeling of hope doused as quickly as water being upended upon smoldering embers.

The drones then swiveled, leading the paralyzed quarians into a hidden room whose door opened to allow them all inside. As soon as the threshold broke from its airtight seal, Ahrun could hear fresh screams erupt from within - high, panicked shouts of pain that pleaded to unseen forces for mercy. But some of the voices, Ahrun could tell through wet and heavy gasps, pleaded for death. The young quarian shuddered long after the door was closed, a sensation of being impaled thickening in his gut.

Da'var carefully watched Ahrun's reactions. "Through that room is the only exit available to you. Everyone always goes in there more than once and that's where everything changes for them. They'll do anything to stop the torture and anyone who goes in there either dies or becomes one of the guards to help assist in the never ending cycle of pain, only now they're associates instead of prisoners. I've seen the bravado of cocky boys fade in an instant once they get their first taste of pain. To them, servitude is infinitely preferable to agony."

"Yet you're still here after all this time," Ahrun pointed out.

The human vaguely nodded as he lightly touched the jagged scar upon the side of his neck. "I've never been given that choice. They've never gone so far as to kill me, but that day is coming soon. I know it. Our host is an impatient sort and he wants to see the result of his efforts bear fruit… soon. Although he should know that I'm going to keep resisting his abuse - my goal is to have him derive the least amount of satisfaction possible whenever he tortures me. Not saying that I'm succeeding, but I definitely try to give it my all."

Da'var continued to stretch, bending his torso so that it was almost parallel with his lunged knee. The human breathed out slowly, eyes staring straight ahead, as his tortured hamstrings vibrated uncomfortably, twanging as they were pulled in all directions.

As the human was doing this, Ahrun was wondering that if quarians were not bound to live in enviro-suits for all their lives that they could get to be as flexible as humans. He made a note to try it out, test his limits, the next time he was in a clean room, even though it had been years since he was last suitless.

"Is she the reason why you still resist?" Ahrun asked. "Your wife, I mean."

Da'var paused in the middle of his stretch and shot a glare towards Ahrun that was so piercing that it made the quarian freeze up, uncertain if he had crossed a line with that question.

But the human slowly blinked and broke the stare first. "Perhaps…" he hoarsely uttered, looking lost in thought. "Though I don't know if she would have me back, even after all this time. I still have so much to tell her…"

Da'var surreptitiously wiped a tear that had nestled in the corner of his eye. "Wishful thinking at best, but it's all I have, no matter how unreachable it is. What about you, Ahrun? What will _you_ hold onto when you risk being broken?"

Ahrun's fingers twisted together nervously. "My… my mother. It's been so long since I saw her last. I would give anything just to see her again."

"That's good. It's nice to have people like that in your life. Anyone else?"

"There…" now Ahrun flushed under his visor. "There is… a girl. We're not… together, I mean, but we were inseparable growing up. We… always joked that we might be together someday. I… it's so stupid… I've always wondered if we would truly become something more than friends, but I haven't seen her in years."

"It's not stupid at all," Da'var's voice was calm and gentle as he finally stood up from his stretch and bent his back a bit before he sat down upon the bench next to him. "The people you care about can be your greatest strength… but it's also been my biggest weakness. I can only hold onto the fantasy of getting back to my wife and beseeching her for forgiveness. Deep down, I know that I will probably never even see her again but if I forcefully delude myself, to act irrationally in the face of logic, then I can still maintain this facade. Though at some point, my willpower will fail. I hope to forestall that as long as I can - it's the only thing keeping me alive."

Gradually, the cluster of quarians began to hurry over to the wall where the food tubes were currently being dispensed with a series of sucking _clunks_. Da'var ignored the rush and continued to sit down upon the bench, uninterested in eating at the moment. Ahrun considered heading over to grab a tube of food paste but looked between the long line and Da'var's pensive face before he decided to sit down next to the human, who arched an eyebrow at the move.

"You're not going to eat?"

"I'm giving the line a few minutes. There'll be something for me regardless. You still need to continue with your account."

Da'var mustered a dry chuckle. "You've got better things to do than let me recount my sob story."

The quarian felt his cheeks grow hot, momentarily flummoxed. His thirst to pierce this nebulous fog of confusion momentarily spiked, drawn from his frustration of having the human dangle the answers just out of arm's reach.

"You _promised_ that I would understand why I'm here," Ahrun shot back as he prodded the human's arm hard. "I'm still nowhere close to that point! If anything, I'm entitled-,"

The human interrupted with a scathing laugh as he forcefully clamped a hand over Ahrun's, stopping it from prodding his arm. Ahrun gritted out a strangled noise as the almost mechanical grip crushed his hand, five digits completely overpowering his three.

"You're entitled to _shit_ , quarian. I only told you that I would provide you with an adequate background of yours and everyone else's predicament, _not_ for me to go through all the mistakes I've made in painstaking detail!"

"And you still haven't gone through with your end of the bargain!" Ahrun yelped, loud enough for passerby to turn in the direction of the shout, a sea of faceless visors all bringing color to the snow-white plain. "You've only been giving me the broad strokes this entire time! I still don't know what any of this has to do with me, or why you're here, or what your name actually is! You've even kept your wife's name from me the entire time you've been telling this story! I know _nothing_ about you because you act like you have something to hide!" He then began to beat harder on Da'var's arm. "Let go of me!"

Yet the more Ahrun struggled in Da'var's grip, the more the human tightened his hand. Ahrun jerked this way and that, but the stone-faced human did not as much as budge. If it was possible, his features darkened further.

"I _do_ have something to hide!" he growled. "But why do you think that _you_ should be able to hear it? I'll tell you only what you need to know, _quarian_. You don't get to judge me. You will never truly know me. I let someone in that far once, my wife, and look where it got me!"

"I already told you," Ahrun grimaced as he tried to wriggle his hand out from Da'var's seemingly gigantic fist, "to not call me quarian! You know my name - use it!"

Now Da'var grinned tauntingly, mischief afoot behind his eyes. "Yeah, tough guy? What are you going to do if I don't listen… _quarian?_ "

Ahrun hurled his fist forward without even realizing what he had done until it had already happened. It was totally on instinct, driven in a crazy moment by a genuine and surprising anger. Ahrun saw Da'var's face snap slightly to the side and a stiff pain erupted in the quarian's knuckles as they smashed against the thick bone of the human's jaw. Ahrun did not cry out in pain and neither did Da'var. Incredibly, the human seemed more astonished than injured and his smile broke out further as he tilted his head back into position.

"That's the spirit," Da'var nodded admiringly, still crushing Ahrun's hand in an iron grip. "Try that again!"

The quarian flirted with hesitation, uncertain if the human had temporarily gone mad. What was going on? An apology was bordering on escaping past his lips but it was clear that Da'var did not want such words to be uttered. The human's deep blue eyes speared ice daggers at Ahrun, daring him to proceed.

"Do it!" Da'var suddenly bellowed into the quarian's face.

Ahrun reacted in fear, but this next punch was weaker than the first. A glorified tickle. Da'var shrugged off the hit to his face with indifference, only getting more incensed.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" the human sneered.

Now Ahrun was hopelessly confused as he raised his fist again. He timidly edged his arm back and forth before deciding to go through with it, fighting through the pain of impact to deliver yet another punch to Da'var's face. Now the human let out an audible grunt, but still had not lost the ferociousness that gripped into him like barbs. A tiny trickle of blood bubbled from a split lip, yet the human kept smiling.

"Again!" he yelled.

This time, Ahrun did not hesitate and hurled a punch with all his strength… only for Da'var to pluck his arm out of the sky with a deft hand, his entire body a blur. Ahrun only had half a second to behold his punch being stopped in mid-air before Da'var suddenly twisted his body, sending the quarian skidding across the floor with an agonizing howl.

"You ever thought that I might be keeping things from you because I wanted to spare you from sharing my pain?!" Da'var roared as he stood over Ahrun. "It certainly wasn't because I was intent on keeping you in the dark - it was to protect people like you from trying to sympathize with me! You may think that you can probably glean some understanding from my predicament, but you've never attempted suicide twice, never have been shot and left for dead, never had to cut your own wife's arm off to save her life, and you've never murdered your own child and destroyed your entire family in one fell stroke! When people tell me that they 'understand' my pain, it is _always_ a lie! I don't want to hear lies come from your mouth, too!"

"I don't _want_ to lie to you!" Ahrun coughed, legs wobbling as he stood back up, his eyes slit in rage. "But I can't do anything at all unless I understand! I'm not trying to sympathize with you, Da'var! All I want is the truth, nothing more."

Da'var loudly grimaced, teeth baring themselves slightly as he surreptitiously glanced to the side, temporarily distant.

"The truth is not always pleasant," Da'var said, his face grim.

Ahrun felt his face flush. "I'm not as fragile as you think I am. You don't need to treat me like an invalid just because I'm a quarian. But I do genuinely want you to know that you can trust me. I won't judge you, Da'var, not until you're certain that I've heard everything that I need to hear. How you came here, what my purpose is, who you are."

The human glowered as Ahrun stood within arm's reach. The quarian stood tall, silently asserting himself in the face of superior strength. Da'var silently simmered, his temples subtly throbbing as he forced down savage flashes of a life that had once been his, accompanied by whispers of his real name, what he had been called before.

A past that was most likely lost to him… but still preserved in the fickle realm of memory.

Da'var sighed and shook his head as he appraised the ground, fighting not to look directly into Ahrun's eyes.

"I… apologize for goading you like that," he whispered as he lifted his head, more tears slowly welling. "It's just been… it hasn't been easy. All these months, I…"

Ahrun placed a firm hand upon Da'var's shoulder, offering support and reassurance. The human looked at where the gesture was originating from, his eyes lifting up first in confusion followed by acceptance.

"You don't need to apologize to me," Ahrun slowly shook his head. "I couldn't be in your footsteps, nor do I know anyone else that could. You've been here this long, still remained sane. Tell me how, Da'var. Tell me how you survived."

Oh, this attitude was so _familiar_ to Da'var! The parallels were uncanny. It was hard for him to look upon Ahrun and not see the spirit of the strongest person he knew of, the one person he cared for the most, despite the established facade. This quarian had the strength, the will. Perhaps he too could survive, hold out as long as he could.

At least Ahrun had no ghosts to carry, Da'var perceived with a somber grimace. Perhaps he could be Da'var's revenant, after all understanding was imparted unto him. He might be the only one who could carry out his will, should the human perish here. It was at least worth a shot.

But as Da'var opened his mouth to speak, the fierce whistle split the air once again and two more drones, just like the last time, fell from the sky to now hover over both Da'var and Ahrun. The combined octet of lens gazed at the duo impassively, uncaring about the unpleasant implications of what was to follow.

Ahrun heard Da'var mutter a strangled curse before he was momentarily blinded by a purple light. It faded just as soon as it had arrived, but a tingling sensation all around his body had sprung up in its place. The quarian grunted as he tried to lift an arm, but twinkling electric particles smoothly pressed against the directional force, keeping the limb in place. Reality froze, trapping atoms and preventing the natural inclination to move. He could crane his neck just barely, but any sudden movements were strongly resisted upon as he remained trapped within the translucent purple bubble.

Next to him, Da'var shared a bleak look with Ahrun, who was also trapped in a barrier of his own. "Get ready," he said, but the words sounded choked, the barrier distorting the noises as they passed through. "We're about to meet the man of the house."

"Keelah," Ahrun breathed, discovering that he indeed could still talk while being encased in the paralyzing barrier, his jaw allowed to yaw freely. "I don't know if I have the courage."

"Just follow my lead," Da'var growled as the drones began to guide the purple bubbles along the floor, some clusters of straggled quarians quickly darting out of the way as the two were led to the door were screams once wafted through. The human then managed to catch Ahrun's eye before they were pushed into blackness.

"Just listen," he whispered to the quarian.

Ahrun felt that he was going to vomit if he tried speaking again, but he managed through a trembling gullet.

"L-Listen? Listen to what?"

"You want to hear the rest of my story, don't you?"

The door then shut, pushing aside the light as the dark strangled them both.

* * *

 **A/N: There will probably be one more Idyll chapter as an aside to keep up with the action between Ahrun and "Da'var" later in this story. The next chapter will get back to the main plot with Sam. So far, I'm happy at the rate that I've been able to write these chapters, but just in case, my schedule might not be so forgiving in the future. But there is no way that I'll ever let this story die if I can help it - I'm simply too excited to finally put it to paper, so to speak.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Prison Routine: "Terrible Resolve" by Sarah Schachner from the video game _Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare_**


	6. Chapter 4: Failed Fathers

_Four months earlier  
The Citadel - 3rd Arm Wards  
RESUMING NORMAL TIMELINE_

Furiously, I pounded upon the thickened steel door with a firm fist, each resounding beat echoing dimly only to be swallowed up by the muted thrum of the boulevard a couple stories below. The open-air apartment complex was defined by a series of walkways that spanned across the street, allowing the inhabitants to walk above the riff-raff at their leisure. It reminded me more of a motel and although the residence here was far more luxurious than the 2015 Earth equivalent, it was still quite a few notches down from the apartment that I owned elsewhere upon the station.

Not that I should be bragging anyway - I _was_ living on board a cramped spaceship after being kicked out of my own home.

A gigantic holographic outline of some kind of fish - salmon, tuna, whatever - "swam" past the story that Sagan and I were standing on as part of an advertisement for a swanky seafood restaurant. Magnetic and hypnotic hues of every shade of blue sparked over me, my salivary glands activating with the mere temptation of food. The fish continued to swim on by, joining a swath of other advertisements in some kind of barrage as each and every endorsement vied for space in order to be visible so that their message could be clearly conveyed to the impressionable minds below.

Sagan continued to watch the artificial glow from the swirling cloud of logos with interest as I turned back to the door, tapping my foot expectantly for a sign of life within.

The person inside the apartment had still not responded to my urgent knocking and because I was so impatient, I began banging upon the door again with the kind of delicateness that would not normally precede someone with my kind of profession. Precision and subtlety could work wonders… but not all the time. Tiny scalpels had no chance of bursting through a brick wall when time was of the essence.

"I know you're in there, Iroa!" I called as I waited a few more seconds before I pounded on the door once more. "Open up!"

Still no answer. I leaned against the wall as I looked to Sagan for reassurement. The geth tilted his head as he finally looked away from the marketing war and tightened the aperture on his dual lens subtly to refocus upon my face.

"Perhaps Creator Kannos is currently not present within his residence," Sagan offered.

I shook my head at that. "The man can't go a hundred meters from his apartment, Sagan. He's been under house arrest the entire time he's lived on the Citadel. Where the fuck could he possibly be off to if not here - the grocery store?"

"Obtaining comestibles would certainly be a plausible outcome. We have also identified at least twelve different restaurants offering sustenance within a hundred meters of this location - of which four offer foodstuffs that Creators can sufficiently ingest."

"It's not even close to lunchtime," I grumbled as I took a glance at my chronometer to confirm my suspicion. "I don't think that he's out to eat or to get food for his apartment. And I _do_ know for a fact that he still has several years left before he can get his parole commuted. Make no mistake, he's just past this door."

I let a quarter of a minute pass by with only the inaudible chatter down below to act as background noise. Fed up, I gritted my teeth in frustration and I took a few steps to line myself up with the door.

"Okay, screw this. I'm kicking this door in, get ready."

My body hunched down in preparation and I rubbed my hands together, anticipating the impact that I would deliver with the firm bottom of my heel. Yet at the instant I took the first stride, there was a tiny crackle near the speaker at the top of the door, and a gruff voice burst through, sounding rather tired.

" _Enough, Sam. You're too tenacious for your own good._ _What do you want?_ "

"Ah, he speaks!" I called out while I straightened my body, secretly relieved at not being made to call my bluff. "Trying to avoid me, eh? Ah, whatever, that's not the point. Open the damn door, Iroa. We need to talk."

There was a very noticeable pause on the other end of the line, no doubt complicated by the sordid history I had with this person.

" _I don't want to talk to you._ "

"I know you don't and I don't care. I'm not in the mood to be playing games, just so you know. I'm not leaving here until you let me in this stupid apartment, Iroa."

The speaker broke into a flurry of static as the other person on the transmitting end sounded a rough laugh.

" _Tell me, why would I ever do such a thing, especially for you? After all that you have done to me, why should I do as you command now?_ "

In aggravation, I rubbed at my eyes, already feeling stress begin to press against my forehead. I tried not to think about the past conversations and the circular arguments that I had once shared with Iroa, knowing that they would send me into a fury and I might do something that I would come to regret later. I already had enough of those to contend with right now.

" _Because I'll fucking kill you if you don't_ ," I murmured as quietly as possible under my breath, purely for the purpose of simply saying it as a form of stress-relief. I neither intended such a thing but it did bring me a small amount of comfort to imagine me staving in this man's head. To imagine the widening pool of blood leaking from cracks in Iroa's shattered helmet… brain matter spilling out… as my own hand pushed through the thin fleshy barrier of the throat, sinew and muscle slipping between my fingers, to wrap around the hollow tube of the man's windpipe, ripping it out-

All macabre imaginations lifted from my head as quickly as fog evaporating from the sun's rays. The air seemed cooler in my lungs as I inhaled, yet there was a noticeable throb in my throat to accompany the involuntary action. "Iroa, I'm not going to take more of your shit. Listen, I brought Sagan along with me to do the heavy lifting so this is your last warning: if you don't open your _fucking_ door right now, I swear to god that I'll have Sagan break it down. You can bet your ass that a geth like him is certainly capable of pulling that off. What do you say?"

In a panic, Sagan whirled to look at me, intent on determining if I was serious or not.

"Samuel, it would be _illegal_ to invade Creator Kannos' dwelling as we are not registered as law enforcement officials. We also do not possess a warrant granting us access to-,"

I quickly brought my fingers together in the _zip-it_ motion to shut Sagan up. "For once in your life, can't you just play along?" I hissed in frustration.

Apparently, I needn't have worried, because after a few terse seconds of silence, there was a scraping sound of metal on metal and the door finally parted, revealing a quarian draped in gold accents around his form, his visor colored a dull rose.

Iroa did not move to let me inside. He instead crossed his arms in the middle of the doorway and appraised me with I could barely discern as a look of disdain. The quarian was just a hair shorter than me, but much thinner. The saffron fabric that wrapped around his enviro-suit, highlighted with raised, jagged lines, had been cropped shorter from the last time that I had seen him - the flowing, silky robes he had once worn had been downgraded to the regular fibers that I had seen quarians adorn themselves with. A thin strap of this fabric wrapped tightly around the back of his helmet, leaving the majority of the covering exposed to the elements. Iroa had also lost the scarf that he had used to wrap backwards around his neck, revealing the blackened seals of his neck as a new weak point. He looked cowed, almost pathetic.

Despite his obvious physical changes, I found it hard to dredge up an ounce of sympathy for him. This man had been responsible for one of the most stressful periods of my life about a year back. He had tried to sow strife amongst my family for no particular reason other than to fuel his own selfish hopes and dreams, even if they trampled over the wishes of others.

He had been beaten, but even a beast without claws could still bite.

"Why are you even here?" Iroa sighed, his posture finally drooping as he perceived that my own stony expression was not going to crack before his. "Come to rub misfortune in an old man's face?"

"If I have to," was my even response. "But not today. There are things we need to discuss."

Iroa seemed to take that with a fair amount of suspicion. "What sort of things?"

"The kind that could mean the difference between life and death. You going to invite me in?"

Iroa's eyes flickered over to Sagan and he stiffened, a natural ingrained reaction upon perception of his people's former foe - their misunderstood butchers.

"Not with that geth of yours around. It stays outside."

"That's not your decision," I growled as I took a menacing step forward. "You don't get to-,"

"Samuel," Sagan intervened, his calm voice effusing over the natural din. "I will remain here if that will diffuse any concerns that Creator Kannos might hold."

I bit my lip as I considered Sagan's words. I really would have rathered that Sagan remain as he would have been instrumental in helping to unnerve Iroa, but at the same time I figured that I could manage this by myself, despite whatever misgivings I might hold. In any case, if this was going to make Iroa a bit more amenable in the end, then I suppose that this could be beneficial… for now.

"Satisfied?" I glanced at the quarian, arching an eyebrow for good measure.

Iroa did not answer right away and simply turned his back on the two of us as he hastened into the shadows of his apartment. I took one last look at Sagan for confirmation before I followed the quarian inside, letting the door slide silently shut behind me.

Alone in the lion's den. Fight or flight - sirens were shrieking in my head. I steeled myself in case trouble should arise yet an intrinsic fear began working its way into the vault that was my very soul. It wormed through the muscle of my heart, chomping at the strong fibers with gusto, creating a churning motion that I felt deep in my stomach. Electricity tingled up and down my spine, sending goose bumps rising and for each slight movement to be sharp and focused, my reflexes enhanced laser-quick.

There were only three people alive right now that had ever made me feel this way. Coincidentally, all three of them happened to be quarian.

But here I was, face to face with an old foe that had tried to tear my life apart, had pointed a gun in my face, all for the vague reasoning of "family." This man was prepared to do anything and everything, to move heaven and earth for his own ambitions. Did he still feel that way now? Would he truly be so foolish as to grope for his revenge in this place? Such blind ignorance was not so easily cured - Iroa had to still be feeling the residual effects of my denial.

The good news was that Iroa was probably as afraid as I was in this moment.

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the cramped flat, I shoved my hands into my pockets as I made to deliver a sour scowl. Iroa's apartment was small - studio sized - and was very spartan with its amenities. A couch in front of a vidscreen wall had a few lumps in its cushions, but was otherwise pristine. Iroa must be using it as a bed, I figured. The apartment had a chest high partition on the far side that separated the living area from the kitchen, which had the bare essentials in terms of accommodating food preparation: stove, microwave, fridge, and a sink. Nothing here was flashy or ostentatious of the sort (how very Bauhaus), but the entire place, I did notice, was meticulously maintained and exuded such an atmosphere of order and cleanliness that bordered on the OCD spectrum.

Ironically, it was probably the most luxurious place that Iroa had ever lived in before. None of the best comforts the quarian flotilla could ever hope to match the cheapest lodgings on the entire Citadel.

"Love what you've done with the place, Iroa," I said as I set a hand upon the quarian's couch. "You've certainly done well for yourself."

Iroa did not seem to be amused from my faintly sarcastic comments and he just glowered at me as he stood in the kitchen, as if the partition between the two areas would somehow protect him from me. I could understand why as the last time the two of us were face to face, I had beaten this man to a pulp, nearly killing him. Some trepidation could be considered rather natural, all things considered.

"C-Sec lent me this place not long after I got here," Iroa said as he busied himself behind the counter. He was rustling around rather frantically for something within the drawers so I, my suspicions aroused, hurriedly walked over and quickly clutched the quarian's wrist, halting it in place while it was buried within the counter.

"Not so fast," I warned as I slowly withdrew Iroa's arm, relenting only after I saw that the man was clutching some kind of opener in his fist, and nothing like a blade to be used against me.

Iroa fixated me with a long look. "A little jumpy, are you?"

"You shouldn't need to ask that," I responded as I begrudgingly released Iroa's wrist. "You're smart enough to figure out why I'm having trust issues with you."

The quarian set the opener down upon the counter and gingerly held his wrist, taking a second to shoot a jagged glassy stare at me. I felt the same chill leave my own body as I sought to call forth the inferno that I knew resided deep within, to melt the permafrost that had so adhered to my lungs and to let the vapors of courage waft forth.

Iroa headed over to the fridge and opened it wide enough so that I could see what he was doing.

"I hope the parole department knows that you're here right now. They do so like to keep tabs on me and they're not exactly very forgiving when it comes to the slightest transgression."

"That's really none of my concern," I said coldly. "Besides, the terms of your restraining order only apply to your daughter, not me. _She_ was the one who filed the grievance against you. I, meanwhile, can drop in at any time I want."

Iroa took a quick backwards glance. "I assumed you would abide by the rules that bound your family. Yet… here you are. Willingly upon my doorstep. Never would I have thought that you would rise to the occasion to visit me. Not after what we went through on Rannoch."

"Ordinarily I would never have considered it. But as you said… here we are."

The two of us briefly locked eyes, sharp steel both reflected in our gazes. For a brief instant, I had the thought that Iroa was packing a pistol out of sight, hidden in a compartment within the fridge, intent on using it against me. That fear was quickly allayed as he savagely shut the fridge, his hands clutching a food tube instead, his body moving slowly and deliberately as he availed himself to the tube opener that he had previously placed on the counter before he sat down upon the couch. I took the chair that was positioned to the couch's immediate left - I had to turn my body at an angle so that I could fully face the man.

"Yet…" Iroa sighed, remorse creaking in his voice, "It must not be ordinary times since you came here of your own volition. If only my daughter could find the same spirit… to shake off the vestiges of trepidation. I would at least like to see her again. At least one more time. But I understand why she doesn't. What I don't understand is why _you're_ here and not her."

I'd like to think that the both of us knew why Iroa's daughter continually failed to visit him and that he was just playing up his sorrow now simply to curry favor with me, not that I was going to fall for it. Simply put, his daughter hated Iroa so much more than I ever could.

She despised him with all her willpower - with all the fury and energy a lightning bolt made upon the destruction of a singular point. Such anger was immediate with her… and final.

Iroa'Kannos was Nya's biological father, which would technically make him my step-father, whom she had only met for the first time about a year ago. Iroa had been exiled from the Migrant Fleet before Nya was born that involved some elaborate scheme regarding secret AI research and a particular malevolent admiral in the quarian fleet that vied for power. As she had been raised by her mother for most of her childhood away from the fleet on a colony moon, Nya never got the chance to meet her father, which was because everyone assumed that he had been killed in an accident aboard his ship - the incident that had resulted in his posthumous exiling when his illegal research had been uncovered. The truth was a bit more complicated but Iroa was alive and well the entire time as his death has been faked in order to force him carry out controversial research by his handler, Admiral Xen. Xen was a raving lunatic of a woman who above all else sought power and the technology to attain power, and she would subsequently try to stage a rebellion against her own kind a couple years after the Reaper War had ended at the apex of her maddened transformation, a civil war that concluded with Xen's defeat and eventual execution by the provisional quarian government.

Despite the fact that Iroa had been exiled, he still had resided within the Fleet the entire time, albeit against his will. The cover-up surrounding his "death" in addition to the lengths Xen went to hide his presence after the fact meant that when Nya did return to the Fleet after her mother had passed away from disease, she still remained unaware that her father was still alive, despite being the closest she had ever been to him before, proximity-wise. She still believed, as did everyone, that Iroa had perished in an explosion and that her mother was exiled in his stead simply to prove a point to the impressionable citizenry. That stigma would eventually come to shape her attitude regarding her father in the future, as it greatly inhibited her standing amongst her peers to the point that she faced daily ridicule for being the child of an exile.

It was only years later, just a few months after Nya and I had married, did we discover, to our complete surprise, the entire truth while we were vacationing on Rannoch. Iroa, who had finally gotten his chance to escape Xen's clutches while the admiral busied herself with the civil war, intercepted us on the planet's surface to reveal his true relation to Nya, unable to keep the secret hidden any longer.

It didn't go as well as he had expected.

For some strange reason, Iroa had assumed that Nya would have been overjoyed to discover that her father was still alive to the point that she would abandon the life she had crafted for herself in the interim so that she could join him to make up for lost time as part of an extremely limited family reunion. To nobody's surprise except Iroa's, Nya had vehemently refused the offer as she had a much more vested stake in remaining with me (as she did love me quite a lot at the time) compared to him, essentially a total stranger.

In hindsight, it should have been obvious that after almost three decades of being completely absent throughout your life that feelings of disinterest or resentment would take hold regarding these sensitive concepts. Nya had never harbored the idea of ever seeing her father in the flesh, and if she did it had been a long while since she had given it some serious thought. Thus, the reunion was not as joyous as Iroa had initially predicted - it had been full of hostility from Nya as well as from my end as I realized more and more the sinister and deluded intentions that Iroa had for his daughter. Iroa's belligerence eventually led to Nya snapping and rebelling against her father, proclaiming that she would never give him the love as would naturally befit a father. What followed would be an intense sequence of events of us all traversing around Rannoch, hounded at every turn by Nya's extended family while Iroa pathetically tried to plead his case to deaf ears, to be denied at every turn.

As the end of our time on Rannoch approached, I finally confronted Iroa upon a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean - the climax of our familial clash. Flushed with rage at how he had nearly upended my life and for the brazen attitude at how he carried himself with a sense of entitlement, I had proceeded to thoroughly thrash the man atop the submerged craft in retaliation for how he had shattered the peaceful serenity that I had finally seemed to achieve with my wife. The life that I had lived prior to meeting Nya had been an agonizing one, filled with one dark twist after another. To be denied my peace was as unforgivable a sin as one could commit against me and I would not let anyone wrest it from my hands lest they be met with virtuous violence. Iroa would later be arrested after everything was all said and done, and the quarians eventually turned him over to C-Sec, essentially exiling the man for a second time. C-Sec had jailed him, but not for long and he was put onto the parole program for good behavior, although it would be a long time before he could effectively be released from the program, considering of how far down his crimes reached.

Fully cognizant of Iroa's history, I made sure to dedicate every waking moment to never take my eyes off the older man, just to make sure that he would not try anything particularly foolish as he did have a reason to hate me with every fiber of his being. I could win in a fistfight with Iroa if it would come to it, but that was a small comfort as long as the quarian had no surprises up his sleeve.

"I've been… er, tangled up in quite the stressful situation recently," I said, taking care to enunciate every syllable.

Iroa gingerly played with his food tube in his hand. "What type of situation are you talking about, exactly?"

"The type that concerns your son. Eyzn."

The quarian stilled, his lungs freezing his breathing in place. Immediately Iroa simmered, eyes darkening more and more.

"He's not _my_ son," he emphasized with a shaking hand.

"Yet you're the only remaining family he knows particularly well," I leaned forward, mouth stiff. "Eyzn's back, Iroa, and I don't think he's around for the purpose of making social calls."

"Eyzn… is not my responsibility. He never has been! Why concern yourself with him?"

"Why concern myself with him?" I whispered as I gestured with a hand. " _He's_ the one concerning himself with _me_. I just got back from a little chat with him where he proceeded to break my fucking finger! This is the same lunatic who cracked my bones and tortured me with chemicals while I was a prisoner on board _your_ ship. Eyzn's never struck me as the one to let bygones be bygones and I know for a fact that he's out for blood! With that in mind, who better else to go to for any information on the little shit?"

"I see," Iroa said as he set his food tube upon a little stand next to his chair, his voice sounding tired. "You think I might have something to do with his return, yes? It must seem like a huge coincidence that Eyzn shows up on the same station that both you and I live on. I'm not entirely surprised that he still wants to hurt you, Sam, but some days I wish I had never met Eyzn as well. Perhaps I was just unlucky enough to be entrusted with that boy. His intentions were always good, yet his impulsive nature seemed to get the better of him every time. Make no mistake, I don't believe that Eyzn will stop tormenting you until… well..."

The obvious did not need to be made apparent. I leaned forward, hands fiercely clenched, my injured pinky obnoxiously jutting out. "He's only promised that _this_ is a taster! What do you think he'll do a day or two down the line? A week? A month? He's gone much further than a simple finger, let me tell you, and I'm _not_ going to let myself be subjugated to that again! Eyzn's a bona fide lunatic and I want to know what he has in store for me."

 _And for the people I care about_ , I thought but did not say.

"So what do you think that I'll be able to tell you?" Iroa shrugged, his tone mild.

I blinked. "Don't even _think_ about trying to play innocent with me, Iroa," I threatened. "You mean to tell me that you don't have any insight as to what Eyzn is planning next? That's nothing but bullshit, pal."

Iroa scoffed and briefly eyed the ceiling. "I don't have anything for you, Sam, and that's the truth of it. I'm not exactly in Eyzn's good graces right about now. I haven't talked to him since… oh, probably since Rannoch. Besides, I'm not allowed to make calls to his omni-tool address anyway. He also hasn't bothered to talk to me, either, which doesn't really surprise me. You want to check my call history? Be my guest. I'll gladly forward over my records if that will assuage you somewhat."

"That… won't be necessary," I said through gritted teeth as I wiped my damp brow. I was starting to boil a little more with frustration, now that one of the vague theories that I had been previously courting had deflated in my head in seconds. "Do you even know why he's even roaming free while you're stuck in parole?"

"Oh, I know exactly why. After all, he was not the one charged as the 'mastermind of the entire Rannoch debacle.' No, I got slammed with all the heavy indictments while he got off lightly. I'm not surprised he's out and about right now."

"So, even after all this time that he's been walking, you're telling me that he hasn't bothered to contact you? _You_ , his step-father, probably the only father figure he's had in his life. Explain that to me."

"Probably the same reason _Nya_ has not bothered to contact me yet," Iroa countered, grit beginning to clog his throat. "If Nya proclaims to hate me, then Eyzn's scorn runs even deeper. He apparently thought that I was not giving him enough attention as befitting his status as my step-son and not only that, my ignorance that fueled his jealousy was entirely manufactured by me. He was right, of course. If anything, what occurred on Rannoch confirmed his greatest suspicions. I gambled my complete trust in Nya, hoping that she could share my pain, my point of view, but I deliberately neglected Eyzn in the process. He took that as a slight, as he should, and we've not so much as spoken since the day we both were escorted off the homeworld."

"If you're trying to pin that last part on me, forget it. I certainly did not force you to completely disregard Eyzn."

"Not everything has to be about you, Sam," Iroa's disappointed tone cut through the air. "I have enough sapience to rightfully determine where the correct blame lies. In the case with Eyzn, it was all my fault, I admit. I am the one responsible for his… malcontent."

"It's so refreshing to hear that you're so remorseful," I uttered in a mocking growl, "but that means absolutely nothing to me. I am not the one that you need to utter that sentence to, Iroa. What about me? Do you have any remorse at what you did to me? Your interference all those months ago nearly cost me my life, and the lives of those I care about, including your own daughter. Do you have enough _sapience_ to associate the right blame for that?"

Iroa was limply swaying his body as he judged the floor before him. Slowly the shield he had hastily erected around his psyche had been chipped away, revealing the tender core within the cracks. He pondered my question for as long as he agonizingly dared, frustrating me with his silence before he next opened his pathetic mouth.

"I… I only did what I thought was right…"

That wasn't good enough. It was even worse - his continued stubbornness enraged me to no end.

I furiously stood and within two seconds, had lifted the hapless quarian up from the couch (upending his food tube in the process) and had him pinned against the wall in a fearsome grip. My hands clenched at his suit, leaving stark creases in the material. I could feel the triad of heartbeats in Iroa's chest fluttering in a panic. His eyes trembled fearfully. This was no longer the same quarian I had met around a year ago and I secretly reveled in my superiority.

"Don't…" I had to keep myself from letting my blind fury spill out in an unintelligible tangle, "... _ever…_ give me… that excuse again!"

Iroa whined as he meekly struggled against my iron hand. "It's the truth… I _swear_ , Sam."

"Fuck you."

"Do… do you not believe me?"

The boldness of him to ask me such a thing. My face did not change expression save for one little disgusted twitch of my nose. Tightening my hands around Iroa's neck, I rudely pulled him from the wall and shoved him down onto the couch, pressing the back of his helmet into the soft cushions. My knee planted itself upon the quarian's chest and I kept Iroa there, to be trodden upon under my boot.

"No," was my surprisingly even response. "I don't."

Incensed from my step-father's attitude, I lifted my hand and quickly put it just below Iroa's visor. My fingers sought out a duo of catches that wiggled ever so slightly against the main housing of the quarian's helmet. Depressing them maddeningly by only a millimeter, I held Iroa's head in this position, between the couch and my hand, my face a mask of unbridled anger. The quarian let out a frightened moan, knowing what would happen to him if I fully depressed the man's visor seals, his eyes only growing wider and wider as I teased him with death.

Even though Iroa lived here, this apartment was not clean - it had no filtration unit. It would almost certainly guarantee a slow and painful end for the quarian if I were to expose him to the air here and now.

"You are _lying_ to me," I whispered to Iroa as I kept my fingers at the latches. "What will it take for you to admit that to me, hmm? That what you thought was right was, in fact, very narrow of you? Did I have to go this far, Iroa? If maybe you had possessed a shred more humility I would not have to do this, to forcibly pry your fear out. I think of you as a dishonest and selfish person, a sad shell driven only more pathetic with each passing loss."

"Please…" Iroa begged, his silver eyes wobbling. He was frightened out of his mind. "Don't…"

I would be lying myself if I said that I wasn't considering going through with it - to rip off his mask and leave him to convulse upon the floor, taken by an acute allergic reaction. After all, even though the sum total of how long I spent with this man was rather low, the severity of the impact he left upon my life was significant. His selfishness, his stupidity, every single facet of his behavior all wound up in helping to facilitate bloodshed. My blood. Nya's blood. Iroa should have known better - his newest wife, Kraana, ended up paying the ultimate price for his actions.

He must hate me a lot.

With a disinterested grunt, I pried my hand away from Iroa's helmet and shoved the man rudely down further into the couch before I finally backed off. The quarian's hands shot to his head, making sure that the seal around his face had not been breached and he breathed out loudly in relief when he realized that he was still safe. I stepped backwards a bit as the quarian continued to tremble. I still stared intently at him but Iroa refused to meet my withering glare.

"If I really wanted to kill you, Iroa, I'd have done it a long time ago," I proclaimed, forcing him to look at me. "I'm not here to beat the contriteness out of you, if you even have an ounce of compassion that isn't misguided, that is. All I want to know is what the hell your _step-_ son has in mind for me."

"I already told you," Iroa shakily mumbled as he fought to sit up, fighting back wet rasps. "I don't have any idea!"

"I'm not buying that."

"Then we're at an impasse. I can't give you any help about things I don't know about."

"You really are useless, aren't you?"

The quarian, my step-father, gave me a hard look at that. He waved off the insult by staring off solemnly into the distance, his hand dropping away from his neck as he took a deep breath. "He really frightens you, doesn't he? Eyzn."

My own hand came to my jaw, remembering the sting of the blows that I had suffered just this morning. "You have no idea," was my hoarse reply.

The feeling of my nose being mashed under blows from the crazed quarian stabbed forth, as did the sensation of blood dripping from my mouth, and gas smothering my face. All painful memories with one thing in common: Eyzn. The architect of my misery, the demon on my shoulder. His claws reached toward my soul, even now, eager to crush it in a spindly grip. I shuddered at the unwanted thoughts, trying to drive away the dark chill that speared my bones, taunting me with the promise of more pain.

My broken finger was proof enough of his intentions and what was to come.

"He's not going to stop," I uttered. "There's nothing that I can do. He lost his mother and now he wants his revenge on me for my involvement. I need to find out where he is so that I can take him out first."

Iroa reclined a bit as he regarded me in interest. "But you're asking me to give you information that will directly lead to violence against family. _My_ family… and _yours_ , Sam."

"I don't care. It's either him or me. I have to kill him or he'll hurt more people after he's done with me."

"And you expect that I would willingly help you accomplish this? Even with the fractured relationship between Eyzn and me, he's still my step-son."

"As am I," I retorted, the implications feeling odd upon my tongue, that I could call this alien such a thing - to adopt him as my elder as extra baggage from my marriage. "You're going to have to take a side eventually, Iroa. There's no room in this galaxy for Eyzn and I to exist peacefully. I just hope that you'll make the right choice in the end."

The quarian gave a huff through his vocabulator, the vague expressions plainly visible through the smoky visor. "I don't know…"

I debated continuing to press my case, but I decided against it. Iroa was too far gone - hopeless and unable to be rehabilitated. There was too much history between us. Too many hurdles to overcome on the road to forgiveness. I was about to rise to leave when Iroa tilted his head back to me.

"When Eyzn came to you this morning… what exactly did he say? What did the boy promise to do to you?"

It took me a few minutes to run through the entire ordeal of how I had been placed into Eyzn's midst in the first place, yet Iroa seemed to be soaking in every bit of detail with rapt attention. In contrast to how I had described the scene to the consulate, I did not leave out any implicit details as I was sure that Iroa was aware of the subtext. I made sure to mention that Eyzn specifically let me go under the pretense that he would certainly meet me again in the future - an outcome that I somehow knew would come to pass, the very reason why dread was squeezing my insides right about now.

"He's as tenacious as I remember," Iroa mused after I finished. "He never stopped hating you after Kraana died, Sam."

I tilted my head in contemplation. "And you stopped? I just told you that Eyzn's entire reasoning for hunting me down is because his mother died on Rannoch. Kraana was _your_ wife, after all. So, why wouldn't _you_ hold a grudge against me?"

The quarian stood up from the couch, hands crossed in front of his chest as he walked over to the translucent window that allowed barely a glimmer across the avenue upon which he was perched. A pink glow briefly invaded to cast a long shadow across the floor, turning the quarian's gold accents a sickly salmon color. His posture was slack, eyes constantly dimming and refocusing, and for a while he said nothing while he mentally went over my story.

"I…" he finally croaked out, a shimmering advertisement from the avenue warping across his visor, "I think it's because… I've always known that what you had to do was justified. I saw how Kraana treated the both of you back on Rannoch. She probably indeed wished to kill you in the very end. I've made my peace with it. What was done had to be done. Kraana acted on her own free will and it was not the path that I would have intended."

"Yet it's because Kraana died that Eyzn has promised to torment me. Regardless if it could be reasonably justified or not, he's still after me because his mother is dead."

"As to which I'm not sure I could be of use to you," Iroa turned away from the window. "Like I said, Eyzn and I no longer speak to each other. I'm not even sure if he'll ever speak to me again. He's carrying these wounds a lot more personally than I am."

"That much is obvious," I added acidly.

It then became apparent that Iroa had nothing else that was of importance for me. In some ways, this was a relief. Considering our history, I would have expected him to be cursing me out consistently, completely in a rage about the turn that life had taken him down. Within this bare apartment, I realized that I had gotten no closer as to trying to get inside the mind of Eyzn, not with his stepfather living incognito like this.

I wonder if Iroa realized that if I had the choice, I would trade places with him in a heartbeat. The two of us had not wound up unscathed after all. This was the closest either of us had been to the other's position.

Disheartened at the stark silence that had befallen about us, I headed for the door to leave this hated man all by his lonesome again.

"Nya doesn't visit me," Iroa suddenly called out as the door outside slid open. I paused in the middle of the threshold, but still did not look back. "She… doesn't want to see me, I understand. But… please, Sam. When you see her next… I hope that you will at least give her my sympathies."

Still staring out into the tangled mish-mash of the neon-infused mantle of an undulating crowd, I hung my head sharply as I simultaneously uttered a stark laugh.

"I think that my chances of sharing any words with Nya are just as good as yours, Iroa."

"I know," the elder man sighed sagely. "But I just wanted to let you know how I feel. At the same time, I do hope that you two will find a way to make it back together. At the very least… if it's any consolation... I was sorry to hear about your daughter. Despite what I may think of you… your child did not deserve such a fate."

Frowning, I blithely shook my head with a scowl while I used my hands to steady myself upon the barriers of the threshold. "Sorry just isn't going to cut it," I seethed as I cut a dark look to my step-father. "Not this time. Thoughts and prayers won't bring my daughter back to me. They won't heal my family."

"Sam," Iroa's gentle voice wafted as he tenderly took a step closer to me. "I never meant to assume. But I've been in your position before. I know how you feel... what it's like to lose a child."

Now I finally looked back outside, my eyes beginning to well with tears as I pondered the ignorance of the quarian's statement. He still had a daughter who was alive and well - he never had to hold his infant's corpse in his own hands. I shudder to think what I would have done to Iroa on the spot, had I access to an object capable of killing, be it a gun… a bat… a knife. The inclination was choked down eventually, but not without cost. Through reddened eyes, Iroa turned blurry as a sob did its damnedest to work its way out of my throat.

"No you don't," I murmured savagely before I finally stepped back out in the open air, allowing the door to mercifully slam shut between the both of us.

The quarian now encased away, I was allowed to voice a strangled cry as the tears sprang forth in earnest.

* * *

I was obviously in a dark sort of mood after beating a hasty retreat from Iroa's apartment. I was back on the main concourse within one of the Citadel's many wards after I had spent half an hour trying to get my emotions under control in a deserted stairwell. Ten minutes later I was flowing with the tide of people without much control over my direction, with Sagan in my wake. Tormented thoughts blipped into my head, one after the other, each offering conflicting choices on how I should proceed next.

Was Iroa telling the truth of not having communicated recently with Eyzn? It certainly seemed so. Throughout our conversation, I could discern none of the trademark tics of nervousness that were ever-present when someone was trying to spin a lie. Granted, Iroa _had_ been nervous the entire time he was talking to me, but it seemed reasonable to assume that I was the cause of his panic and not from the fear of lying to me explicitly.

All I had gotten out of this was the ability to mark off one less conspirator against me… along with a headache that had manifested from the extreme stress of the encounter. God, Iroa aggravated me so, yet I don't think that what I felt for him resembled hate. No… I probably never hated the man at all. It was most likely such intense and focused frustration from the quarian that consistently rebelled against logic that annoyed me so much. I resented Iroa for his stubbornness - these past memories welled from open wounds in my head, spilling out in a torrid gush and filling my mind with pain.

So… now what? Iroa was a dead end. Where do I go now after this?

"This is hopeless," I muttered to myself after squeezing through a gap of lollygagging young asari milling around a storefront, giggling to themselves as they ogled a display of tawdry frippery behind a barrier of elec-glass.

Hopeless. A good descriptor for my situation. Here I was, ambling about, totally lost with no direction for my life with nothing significant left to lose. The hammer had to fall at some point and I just happened to be the hapless nail.

A haze of saturated color fell upon me in sheets, courtesy of the shifting holographic advertisements and signs blazing above my head. It turned my body various shades - enveloping me in fire, drowning me in water, smothering me with sunlight. I was constantly warmed and cooled by the light as it ushered me along, silhouetting my form against the multitude of mannequins that lined a clothing shop.

I breathed in the sweaty miasma, an alien taste upon my tongue. It was easy to imagine a blade ever so slightly hovering a centimeter above my chest, waiting for the command to plunge into my heart and cleave it in two. Maybe I could be the one to give the order - to end it all with a simple utterance. I should be so lucky as to have that opportunity afforded to me.

If only I was so selfish.

A stiff hand then lightly touched my shoulder and I quickly turned my head to find Sagan looking placidly at me. Well… as placidly as a geth could possibly express.

"Samuel," the geth's soft voice spoke to me, "there are two individuals thirty point three meters behind us that have been following us for the last five minutes."

I almost turned my head around out of reflex but kept still at the last moment, although it took all of my strength to resist taking a peek.

"You sure?" I spoke out of the corner of my mouth as I continued to walk forward along the path. "They quarians?"

"Affirmative," Sagan said. "It is unknown if they wish to inflict bodily harm or not."

"Dammit," I grumbled. Why else would quarians be tailing me? Even after the war, concentrated masses of quarians were an uncommon sight on the Citadel. I should have known that Eyzn would be keeping tabs on me. He apparently did not want me out of his sight for very long.

Screw that little bastard.

I then began rapidly scanning my surroundings in front of me, looking for a place to hide when I suddenly spotted a darkened alley off to the left. I grabbed at Sagan's shoulder plating and quickly hurried him off the beaten path with me, the entire move only taking two seconds to accomplish. The two of us backed into the corner together, fully wreathed in shadow, shielded from view by the towering walls of the ward blocks.

Pressed so close to the geth's solid frame, I could hear more acutely the slight mechanical noises the synthetic emanated from its chassis, a miniature symphony of workmanlike cacophony. I had to concede that it was odd that the geth did not draw all that much attention when he was out in public, despite the obviousness of his yellow armor. Perhaps the attention spans of passerby were diminished when placed into a crowd of unknown faces, a muted roar diluting their senses where they could only focus so stridently upon one specific item at a time. Sagan simply slipped through the cracks in people's vision, completely invisible. Some days it felt like I was the only one who could see Sagan for what he was and what he had once meant to an entire race of people, yet the geth's biggest strengths were the ones not immediately apparent upon first glance anyway.

Take Sagan's observancy, for one. Being a synthetic, Sagan could collate and process an exponentially greater amount of data simultaneously than I could. In any moment, he could take a vertical slice of time and convene several different hypothesis about various aspects that would otherwise be overlooked by an organic mind. Sure, Sagan had some limitations, but he was very good at reading data for what it was.

It was that observancy that allowed him to notice our pursuers, after all.

Backed into this corner, I kept my breathing muted as Sagan dimmed the light from his optics, making us harder to see. My body was tensed, ready to spring out of cover if the quarians were to round the corner with guns blazing. I felt heated and reckless, nothing to emotionally weigh me down.

"Wish I had my pistol," I murmured, still eyeing the boulevard.

With a series of clicks and snaps, Sagan lifted his arm, spinning a familiar looking object upon a slender finger. The pistol stopped spinning at the perfect time for Sagan to offer it to me, grip-first, and I took it with my eyes slightly widened in astonishment.

"I'll be damned," I said in admiration.

"We brought along your firearm from the ship in case there would be a time for you to use it," Sagan explained.

Slowly, I checked the slide to find that the pistol, a Carnifex, was loaded to the brim with heat sinks. I used my thumb to quickly flick the safety catch off and tiny green diodes upon the gun blinked once harmoniously. Cocked, locked, and ready to rock.

"At their last recorded velocity," Sagan stared out from the alley towards the churning crowd, "we have seven seconds before our pursuers reach our position."

My palm tightened on the pistol, sweat turning the grip slippery. My finger edged from the side of the barrel down to the trigger, but it did not rest upon it yet. If I had any qualms about what I was prepared to do, they had all been quashed the second that Eyzn threatened my life. I was determined to show him what depths a condemned man would sink to before the day of reckoning would bear down upon him.

Seven seconds. A disregardable span of time. Almost an eternity for me. The seconds ticking down in my head seemed to blend together almost immediately, like reality itself wished to tauntingly drag itself out just to drive me mad.

No more. I won't let madness get the better of me.

Sucking in a final, decisive breath, I took a long stride back out into the street, pistol clutched tightly at my side, prepared to lift in anticipation of seeing a weapon in my direction, held in the hands of a quarian foe.

...Only to run headlong into a tall individual wearing a ubiquitous blue and gray set of armor.

I halted in place, realizing that it must look bad to this C-Sec officer, running out of a dark alleyway with a pistol clamped in a shaking hand. After all, what good-minded private citizen would be so brazen as to complete a set of actions so dubious unless they carried unlawful intentions? Granted, I had not technically done anything wrong at this point, but my murderous intent was plainly visible.

I thought I was fucked.

But then the C-Sec officer spoke to me in the grating tones of a turian.

"Hello there, Sam."

That threw me for a second and I stuttered in place. It was only then did I realize that I knew this man.

"K-Kurth!" I exclaimed as I hastily tried to shove my pistol into the waistband of my pants. "I… wasn't expecting to see _you_ here."

Kurth did not miss my attempts to hide my firearm, but he let me continue to fumble about with an amused expression reflected in his eyes. Kurth was a turian, about half a foot taller than me, with a dark carapace lightly accented by deliberate strokes of royal-blue face paint. He was one of Nya's former partners in C-Sec - they had both been out on the beat quite a while when Nya was just starting out in her duties, which was how I got introduced to Kurth in the first place. The two of us in the past had exchanged pleasantries and had done the usual small-talk routine at the tri-annual C-Sec get-togethers at the Armax Assault Arena whenever they came up. A rather polite man and a sympathetic face. I considered Kurth a friendly contact, at the very least, but I had not known him well enough to know if he could be trusted.

"Surprise, surprise," Kurth said rather slowly, his eyes narrowed. "We run into each other at the oddest times, don't we? I really hope that you have a good explanation for why I had to come down here, Sam."

Despite myself, a glimpse of movement behind the C-Sec officer cause me to look briefly away for a moment. In the crook between Kurth's body and arm, I could plainly see two drab colored quarians stopped in the middle of the avenue, plainly obvious as the swarm of passerby swerved around them like rocks in a rapid. Good old Sagan, he hadn't let me down yet. The two suited aliens glared at me with a thinly disguised malice - vividly apparent that they _had_ been focused on me this entire time. It was hard to tell what those two quarians were up to, but they were keenly aware of the fact that I had company and that this little distraction had caused me to notice their presence. Their postures slumping in defeat, they shared one last dark look in my direction before they slinked off to join the crowd, quickly blending in with the moving muted throng, never to be seen for the remainder of the day.

"A good explanation for what?" I asked as I recalled where I was, a bit nonplussed. Our quarian stalkers had quickly been set out of mind for the time being - no way would they dare try anything in the presence of a C-Sec officer - so it was going to take some time for my brain to center back to reality.

"Come on, Sam," Kurth sighed as he gave my body a broad gesture. "Walking around a public area while brandishing a firearm? Intruding upon the radius of a known criminal on parole? Not exactly endearing yourself, here. The minute you stepped into range on Iroa'Kannos' omni-tool we were tipped off of your arrival. That man is completely linked up to so many C-Sec monitoring programs he might as well have a plug on his back - and you brazenly entered his abode despite that."

"Huh? I thought that only Nya had the restraining order against Iroa."

"She does, but we set up a passive alert on your system too. We keep Iroa on a watch to make sure that he doesn't pose a flight risk but we also have his tool to monitor you to make sure that you don't come down here to beat the shit out of the quarian."

I gestured back from where we had come, indicating the apartment complex. "Why not talk to the old man yourself? He was still kicking when I last left him."

Kurth did not appreciate the joking tone, as evidenced by his face. "I did check on him, but I did notice that he appeared to be a little… terrorized. Jumpy. Fortunately for you, perhaps, he declined to elaborate on the matter when I inquired."

How very virtuous of Iroa.

"So, what exactly is the problem here?" I asked. "Did I break any laws or something? Because, I had no idea about the radial alerts-,"

"No, you're fine for now," Kurth said plainly. "C-Sec's just trying to maintain a sense of order and discipline by providing these sort of formalities from time to time. It makes us look… responsible." The officer then took a furtive glance behind him as he simultaneously scratched at an itchy plate near his collar. "I don't suppose that you're in some kind of trouble, are you? This kind of behavior, from my experience, seems a little unusual. Especially for someone like you."

No shit, really? I wonder how Kurth would like it if he was in my position I was wound tighter than a drum and weighed down by a multitude of issues in my mind. Of course I appeared skittish.

"Nothing that would fall under your purview," I responded with a rasp. "I'm just trying to contend with a dilemma of my own making."

Kurth crossed his arms in thought. "Hmm. Is it anything that I - C-Sec - can help with?"

As a matter of fact, the issue with Eyzn _could_ be something that C-Sec could provide assistance with but then I remembered the consulate's exact words to me just earlier today. C-Sec was not going to get itself involved in a diplomatic incident because one insignificant human was running scared aboard the station. Hell, I still had no definitive proof that Eyzn was posing as a threat to me - so my position from a legal standpoint was shaky at best. Despite the veil of safety that Kurth was ever so slightly suggesting to me, I knew that such protection would be as useless as a paper shield to me. Eyzn would continue to operate unopposed and C-Sec would do nothing until it was deemed that it was in their best interests to react. Unless Eyzn slipped up and started to terrorize additional Citadel citizens, I was on my own.

"I don't think so," was my honest response. "If you could, I would certainly ask."

Kurth then looked over his shoulder again to where I had seen the two quarians that were following me just a few minutes prior. He scanned the crowd carefully, as if he was trying to spot the source of the disturbance that had unnerved me so. After all, why would I be brandishing a gun on the Citadel unless I felt that I was in terrible danger?

"Let's take a walk to the station, Sam," the turian offered with a shrug. "If things are too hot out here, why not swing on by for a bit? The station's a safe place, very secure, definitely prepared for any eventuality especially after the Cerberus invasion. Maybe it'll give you a chance to cool off, collect your thoughts. We even have plenty of that 'coffee' crap that you humans seem to like so much."

"That's nice of you, Kurth, but I really think that-,"

"Before you refuse," Kurth emphasized. "I must point out that I have a legal obligation to file a report for this incident, despite it being a relative nonissue. To make things easier, just let me record a short, non-incriminating blurb from you while we're there. Your… uh, _synthetic_ can join us, of course."

My eyes flickered over to Sagan at that, practically daring him to take the C-Sec officer's side in this moment. The geth was annoyingly predictable to a fault sometimes, but it was by no means intentional. I knew that Sagan would encourage me to prioritize my safety - denoting that as the most logical option. For some reason, Sagan stayed silent even as he stared back at me, as though he knew that I knew what he was going to say.

Kurth really was twisting my arm, wasn't he? Unbeknownst to him (or maybe _completely_ knownst), there was another reason why I was flaking on agreeing for refuge so quickly without my pride getting in the way. Evidentially, I would be unable to mount a convincing argument for Kurth against my accompanying him to the C-Sec headquarters, even though I could name the greatest conflict for doing so right off the top of my head. You see, it wasn't so much Eyzn that was frightening me at this point. It was the person who worked at the exact building that I would be headed to in mere minutes that sent the jagged edges of panic slashing at my form with gusto.

Nya.

Nya worked at C-Sec, and C-Sec was where I was headed.

 _Wonderful_.

* * *

That short, non-incriminating statement that Kurth had previously mentioned had all been done in the skycar ride over. It was a short sentence that barely lasted ten seconds overall, pretty much denoting my being unaware of violating Iroa's parole range and acknowledging not to do it again without prior approval. I had spoken the passage quickly, in a very toneless manner, but that was legally enough to place a large red bow upon the report that Kurth would eventually submit.

That was the easy part, unfortunately.

From the moment when I stepped into the C-Sec threshold, I deliberately placed a veil of tunnel vision upon myself to keep my focus limited at all times. I had no interest in going anywhere else in this building other than the break room where I could have a cup of coffee in relative peace.

Getting to the room was something of a hassle because I had to pass through two security checkpoints, divulge some personal information to make sure that I had no connections to terrorist groups, and then get Kurth assigned as my official escort just to make sure that someone would be accompanying me at all times. C-Sec was still using the same security practices as a couple years ago as they were undoubtedly still nervous even long after the Cerberus invasion of the Citadel. Not that I could blame them - dozens of officers had been slaughtered in a senseless massacre that had caught the security forces severely off-guard and had ended up being inflicted with terrible casualties in the first few minutes. The ensuing battle had left many places upon the Citadel scarred from explosions and bullet fire. C-Sec still had not bothered to replace many of the chewed up wall panels as they had decided to leave the damage where it had been inflicted as a somber reminder.

C-Sec's break room was just like any other one would find in an office building. Polished tile floors, drab white cabinets, baskets filled to the brim with assorted goodies, and the usual stock of kitchenware appliances at anyone's disposal - much like the range that Iroa had in his apartment. It was not lunchtime yet, so Kurth, Sagan, and I had no trouble in finding a table to sit down at. The turian headed over to the counter first to prepare a cup of instant coffee for me. I noticed that he almost asked Sagan if he wanted anything, but he caught his tongue at the last second, realizing that he was about to ask a geth if he wanted anything to drink. Ah, at least I could still find some amusement in the absurdities of this universe.

Kurth soon returned with the brew and I took a tender sip after I deemed it to be not too hot. It took everything for me not to grimace. The coffee tasted like the beans had been flambéed in a smokehouse and there was a palpable grit that clung to my tongue. So much for enjoying my drink. I kept sipping away at it, trying my damnedest to be polite.

I made sure that my back was facing the door as I did not want you-know-who to be barging in on me unexpectedly. I shudder to imagine exactly what her reaction would be if she saw me here, in her place of work. An image of a wrecking ball just about to plow into a hapless wall inanely came to mind.

"Hey there, Tavre," Kurth then said brightly, drawing my away from my introspection.

I looked up to see an armored asari with deep purple skin and thick red markings standing over our table. Stern eyes, thin yet playful mouth. She looked particularly battle-hardened, especially since she had dual pistols holstered at her hips and, weirdly enough, two swords strapped along her back.

"Sam, I don't believe you've met Tavre Lantios before?" Kurth offered.

Rather begrudgingly, I offered a hand for her to shake. Her grip was deceptively strong, her eyes twinkling mischievously.

"Nice geth," Tavre said, spotting Sagan sitting idly by on the table. "It's docile, isn't it?"

"Just towards the people he likes," I quipped before indicating the swords the asari had on her back. "Don't tell me those are standard issue?"

Tavre shrugged as she gave a wry grin. "They're mostly ceremonial - asari once wielded swords for thousands of years. Officially, I'm not allowed to use 'em, but I can take them along wherever I want."

I could see how news footage of a C-Sec officer slashing crooks to ribbons with a sinister-looking sword could earn some bad PR. Such a summary form of execution would be ruled as extremely inhumane, not to mention downright messy.

"Humans used swords for the longest time as well," I said. "Although, they were all but phased out once traditional firearms started to become more and more commonplace."

"Shame. They're elegant weapons."

"Tavre's in crisis control," Kurth explained. "Hard-hitting, fast-entry type stuff. She gets called in with her squad to 'pacify' intense criminal responses."

Tavre smiled as she flicked an imaginary speck of dust off her armor. "It's not glamorous, but it pays the bills."

"So I see. Kind of like SWAT, then?"

"SWAT?" Tavre and Kurth asked at the same time.

"Er… Special Weapons And Tactics," I refined. "It's the human analogue for their own law-enforcement agencies back on Earth."

"Something like that, I suppose." The asari then scrunched up her face as she regarded me. "I know we've never met each other in person before, but I can't help but feel that you look so familiar."

Kurth interrupted before I had a chance to respond. "Sam is Nya's husband, Tavre. You might have seen him around the office from time to time."

Stop using that word. Stop saying it.

 _Husband_.

"Oh, so that's who you are!" Tavre exclaimed while I tried to manage a somewhat happy expression out of my marble features. I briefly glanced away, chest tightening, as I heard my relationship being put to voice. "I've definitely seen you before! Honestly, I haven't been stationed in this district for very long so I'm still trying to figure things out. Nya and I have actually had lunch together on our breaks quite a lot. Funny, I haven't really heard her talk about you much."

 _Thank you for that_ , I so dearly wanted to spit to this asari, but I knew that she didn't mean the comment as an insult. So, Nya still maintained a social life without me, eh? I knew it should not bother me all that much… but it certainly did. Knuckles slowly turning white as a sheet upon tightened fists, I forced in a shallow gulp of air as I considered my next words thoughtfully.

"There's… there's a good reason for that," I simply said as I stared off into space.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Kurth give a quick cutting motion of his hand, an indication for Tavre to stop talking. Fortunately, the asari seemed to realize that she had accidentally touched a nerve with me and she flushed, embarrassed.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Sam," she said.

"Likewise," I choked out, the word carrying a halfhearted meaning.

After Tavre had left, Kurth leaned over the table as he pushed his own drink aside, but not after emitting a withering sigh. "I don't think she's aware of the troubles that you're facing at home right now…"

"Save it," I groaned as I reclined, my stomach beginning to open up. "If you're about to offer me some advice-,"

"Not like that. Well… sort of."

"No offense, but I don't really want to hear this kind of shit concerning my wife."

The turian looked pained and his jaw silently opened as he desperately thought how to proceed without pissing me off too much.

"I have to level with you, Sam, you'll probably want to hear this. I'm… I'm actually concerned _for_ her."

"Why's that?" I grunted in disinterest, torn between listening raptly and simply spacing out.

Kurth glanced around nervously, as if he was afraid of being overheard. "She's… been facing some difficulties at work lately."

"Yeah, I know," I took a sip of my coffee now that it had cooled to a satisfactory temperature, despite it still tasting awful. "I've heard that she's been spacing out and put onto a performance improvement plan. What exactly do you want me to do about it? Take her tests for her?"

"It's worse than that," the turian sighed as he held up his hands about a foot apart from each other. "There's been rather troubling implications this week, you see. For one, Nya failed her most recent mental health evaluation."

I paused mid-sip. "Wait… what? You mean that easy one where they ask you vague questions about your life - that sort of thing?"

"Yeah, the one test that's nearly impossible to fail. She even took it twice - same result. She told me that she's been declared 'cognitively conflicted.' There's been evidence of extreme mood swings, short periods of spacing out, uneven concentration while she's been on the clock. She's been hereby removed from all assignments by her captain, restricted to desk work, until she gets her act together. I know it might sound presumptuous of me to suggest such a thing…"

Whether it sounded presumptuous or not, I'm afraid that I blanked out before I could discern exactly what Kurth was trying to suggest to me. Mechanically, I sat at that table as I took measured sips of my drink. Failing C-Sec's mental health test, what the hell was all that about? I remember that Rie had mentioned to me just yesterday that Nya was feeling particularly miserable, but could only hypothesize as to the cause. This was far worse than I had initially thought with her.

Despite my natural inclination to avoid Nya's line of sight as much as possible, I still felt a tendril of dread slip around my neck and squeeze. Nya had a good job in C-Sec - she loved being a shuttle pilot. How could she fail a mental health test for a job that she genuinely enjoyed?

The cause, the instigator for the state of her psyche, was obvious.

I was of a mind that Nya had not recovered enough from past traumatic events regarding our family - such deep mental scars were sometimes impossible to fully mend. I had to remind myself that quarians processed emotions a lot more intensely than humans did. Such huge swings regarding strong shifts in her mental state had probably messed her up to the point where she was unable to concentrate on her duties anymore. It would certainly explain the timeline as to when her work performance had begun to suffer. The sorrow that stabbed at me with hateful glee every day, from the loss of my daughter, was felt by Nya tenfold.

The child had come from her womb, shared her genes. Taken away, she left a hole in my wife that could not be stoppered. Nya bled from this hole… and I did nothing to stop it. No, I had merely exacerbated the bleeding.

As much as I tried to convince myself that this issue was not in my domain to help out, I failed to suppress the notion that Nya, this person I had known so well once, was suffering and in need of… something.

Was it me that she wanted? Doubtful. Nya hated me - she had said as much all those months ago.

But still… to know that she was in this state, despite the fact that it was partly of her making…

Almost drunkenly, I rose from my seat, ignoring the spluttered questions from Kurth and a panicked whirr from Sagan, I headed through the door and hooked a left directly into C-Sec's offices.

The main room was abuzz with activity from fellow officers hurrying to and fro, on their way to make their daily reports to their superiors. Quad cubicles dotted the rooms, creating roads and avenues for people to traverse. Muted voices spoke collectively in a hushed din as the noise-suppressing walls did an admirable job in dampening the volume of all the people talking at once. A large board took up part of a wall upon my right, displaying a list of what I assumed were case files. They were color coded and ID'd in some esoteric format that I couldn't make heads or tails of.

I edged past a salarian and a turian who were in the midst of discussing a topic that had to do with "due process" before I headed for the lower-erected cubicles that lay off near the further corner. Heart thudding in my throat, I could not slow the pace of my gait as I got ever closer to my target.

 _She won't say anything she'll regret. Not here. Not in this place._

 _But will I?_

I almost turned back, but I didn't… because it was too late at that point.

The slight curve of a reddish hood was just barely peeking above one of the cubicles, just a scant few meters away. I was just about to turn the corner to reveal myself when they suddenly stood from their chair earlier than I expected, leaving too much space between me and them.

Milky white eyes through a crimson visor instantly locked with mine and they widened in shock and horror, realization crystallizing her features as she took in my presence. I recognized the sudden jolt of fear that ran through my wife as she saw me here, but as an invader, not someone to be welcomed. So many sentences that I had in my head all wrapped around one another in a Gordian knot, twisting my tongue and turning my throat arid. The knowledge that I was hurting Nya just by standing here in front of her was like I was mauling myself, driving that ever-present knife into my heart with my own hand.

In the end, I couldn't think of anything to say to her that did not seem appropriate or at the very least contrived, not that I would have the chance to. Nya took a trembling step back, her breathing hitched, before she suddenly turned tail and hurried out towards a door in the back. Stunned, my feet briefly caught on the thin carpet of the floor before I stumbled after her, hurrying between the rows of desks.

"Nya…" I rasped, too quietly for her to hear. "Wait!"

I had so much to tell her. Her work. Eyzn. Iroa. For some reason, in this instance, I had completely forgotten about her loathing disdain for me, because of what I did to her. But was this selfishness… or compassion driving my actions right now?

I then barged through the door that Nya had just went through just in time to watch Nya walk into a nearby elevator that had arrived in the bay. Breaking out into a slight jog, I came up to the still open container, skin cold and clammy.

"Nya… what-,"

She met me by holding up a hand, preventing me from entering the elevator. Her veiled expression was one of a deep-rooted anger, a quiet snarl that immediately cowed me in place. I froze where I was, as all willpower evaporated from me, leaving me alone and empty in the bay. I could hear the thick rasping of Nya's breathing through her vocabulator as if she were about to lash out like prey being backed into a corner. I contributed to the silence, torn between the barricade her thrown out hand presented and the look in her eyes that raked me from head to toe, as if she was imagining me struck down in front of her.

"Get away from me," she hissed out before the thick doors shut between us.

The elevator hummed as she was sent on her way… far away from me.

* * *

 **A/N: You wanted Nya? Well, there she is! Her presence is going to be a little sporadic over the next few chapters but very soon, she will become an integral part of the story once more. I can't leave out such a favorite character for that long - I'm just dragging this out for all it's worth.**

 **Call me evil, but it's just much more fun for me that way. Heh, heh.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Iroa Again: "Rise" by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the film _Arrival_**

 **Boulevard Stalking: "Flight to LAPD" by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer from the film _Blade Runner: 2049_**


	7. Chapter 5: The Grave Diagnosis

The jackhammer blows from a resounding bass line, repeated in rapid sequences, was nearly loud enough as to rupture ear drums in seconds if one was to be caught hapless in the line of fire. The pulsating throb seemed to warp the air entirely, distorting visions and helping to facilitate headaches in those particularly inclined for migraines.

It would be understandable to mistake the noises as those that accompanied a war zone.

Alas, it was merely a sign that things were in full swing in the dance club. Just another typical day – nothing out of the ordinary. Poppy, gonzo, and full-on obnoxious music blasted out from speakers placed all around the club, creating a sonic environment that resonated in the chests of the patrons, jostling their insides and helping to facilitate a nebulous haze as the gelatinous material of everyone's eyeballs jiggled with each invisible hammer blow from the synthesized pounding.

Intermittently, the music would drop out abruptly, leaving the entire audience frozen in suspense while waiting for the frenzied noise to kick back in. When it did so, the club would spring back to life once more, accompanied by the simultaneous social cue to drink deeply from the provided alcoholic refreshments.

" _We are… IO!_ " some DJ bellowed over a microphone, somehow projecting his voice above the din of the music. The audience repeated the cry, holding their drinks aloft as they drunkenly slurred the phrase as the overhead lights speared down onto the hazy and sweaty mass.

IO was one of those designer clubs that had its entire reputation draped in a secretive nature. Apparently the designer of the place, who had also been the property's first owner, was a hanar billionaire that made his fortune selling expensive lingerie to turians before mysteriously vanishing in a gas-skimmer crash, or so went the latest rumor. Since no one knew exactly who the original proprietor was, the origins of the names were also constantly being debunked from time to time. Some people though that IO was a reference to one of the moons of Jupiter, which in turn had been named after a mythological mortal lover of a Greek god. Others assumed it was a reference to a drug of the same name, which just so happened to be a diuretic for volus. Programmers thought that the name referred to the acronym for input/output and so liked to irritate people with that tidbit whenever the topic drifted that way. Whatever the case, IO was IO and no one could definitively give a precise account as to its official nomenclature or meaning.

Nowadays IO was managed by a pair of thrill-seeking entrepreneurs who constantly experimented with rotating culinary adventures as they tried to keep their place ahead of the competition. Several of their past ventures included rock-climbing walls made out of candy and gigantic alcoholic gelatin molds. Their current exhibit was an experience that was a fan-favorite, back by popular request. Attendees wishing to try it out would be given ponchos and goggles and would enter a special room where an alcoholic mist filled the air. By simply breathing the air, guests could get intoxicated without even having to lift a glass to their mouth… although they could certainly order a drink if they wished to speed the process up, as spending about an hour inside the room was the equivalent of having one highball cocktail. There were appropriate rooms for dextro and levo configurations obviously, as it tends to reflect badly on an establishment if their guests die from amino-acid poisoning.

Such a feature was ignored by an asari as she effortlessly glided through the main room, a gigantic columned hall that stretched upwards a couple stories, specifically molded to increase the resonation of the music that was being played at full blast. The architecture in this surging arena looked like stone, but it was a very clever compound that successfully mimicked the look and feel of stone while retaining the same tensile strength as metal (adhering to building facilitation laws). The dancing crowd moved as one mass, fluttering and vibrating to the accelerating beat as multicolored strobes beat a schizophrenic pattern upon everyone's heads. The asari was able to tune out most of the distractions while everyone around writhed uncontrollably as if they had been all possessed or if they were in the middle of an exorcism.

The asari already had a few drinks in her, so she could understand the desire to set aside her troubles and go for a carefree caper onto the dance floor. However, this was not the genre of music that she was accustomed to, so it was a little hard to justify her actions, especially when the girl currently shaking next to her looked like she was suffering from a stroke while standing upright, her limbs moving awkwardly as if a marionettist had seized control of her body and was yanking away with aplomb and without rhythm.

The smell of booze was ripe. Tavre Lantios wrinkled her nose. Perhaps very close by, the unpleasant notes of someone retching their guts out sadly managed to penetrate the nearly bulletproof veil of music, the sour odor of vomit tickling at her nostrils. Uttering a huff of disgust, Tavre pushed further into the crowd, towards the closest bar.

As she resorted to rudely push hapless dancers out of her way, the asari made another abhorrent observation. Her C-Sec studies were rapidly rattling off notes in her head about the situation, but it would not take a genius to determine that a good portion of these party-goers were high. Nearly all of them were drunk, but Tavre could tell, even in this terrible lighting, that many people were exhibiting the telltale signs of redness upon their sclera, limp sways followed by electric jerks, and the hint of drooling at the corners of the mouth.

Red sand being the culprit? Most likely. Perhaps even that human compound that had been recently making the rounds on the wards was being passed around here, the shit that was called fentanyl. Hits of fentanyl were known on the street as HKs, Hunter-Killers. The gangs believed that injecting it turned you into a super-powered incubus that was resistant to pain, hence the name. The party scene used fentanyl to wipe away the ever-present lens of reality in exchange for something… a bit less lucid.

Tavre gave a sigh unheard by anyone, even herself. Even if she was on duty, she probably couldn't even arrest a single soul in this place. The station would have to bring at least ten paddy wagons just to accommodate all the substance abusers here. It was a problem that C-Sec had been facing forever with places like these - it was a zero-sum game for them. There was no precedent for busting an abundance of drug-users in a place like this before, so as long as the activities were kept under controlled and that no one was killed as a result of the illicit substances, C-Sec turned a blind eye. Admittedly, it irritated Tavre a bit that she was unable to even make one arrest here, but she had to admit that once she started down that rabbit hole of actually conducting a single arrest, she would have to turn around and make another one… and another… and another… until there would be no turning back. As much as C-Sec desired to keep the peace, a shortage of jail space was not a problem they wanted on their hands.

Finally, after edging around a particularly large krogan's hump, Tavre made it to the edge of the bar. She was a regular here - all the bartenders knew her face. She caught the eye of one of them and they gave a nod and wordlessly proceeded to fix a drink for Tavre. The asari smiled - the drink was secondary to her, what was most important was the figure slouched at the bar to her immediate right.

Tavre reached out a smooth, blue-scaled hand and lightly tapped on the shoulder of the enviro-suited person. The quarian - a female - shifted in her seat to look at Tavre, her eyes bleary behind her crimson visor, a drink tube (complete with a straw) tightly cradled in her hands.

"What are you having?" Tavre had to holler above the din with a smile. The quarian looked confused and Tavre could see her vocabulator blink as her mouth spoke, but whatever words she uttered were swallowed up in the thin expanse between the two as the infinite dance party raged beside them.

"I said, what are you having?" Tavre tried again. No luck, the quarian continued to shake her head in confusion.

Biting her lip, Tavre looked onto the counter to spot a tiny little notch embedded half a centimeter above the surface. It was hexagonal in shape, less than two centimeters in width, with a tiny diode that blinked slowly red towards the ceiling. With a laugh, Tavre made a waving gesture above the diode, and the aperture recognized the command and slowly cooled to a blue hue as a bubble of silence quickly enveloped her and the quarian, accompanied by a slight wave of pressure that made the asari's ears feel temporarily bloated.

"You didn't turn on the sonic dampeners," Tavre chided the quarian, but she still remained jovial.

Behind the two, the party still proceeded on as though nothing had changed, but their combined roar had been muted down to a whisper, now that the dampener had synced with the two's implants to filter out specific frequencies of sound, namely those of a combined chatter.

The quarian looked back in affirmation, witnessing the bizarre sight of patrons dancing to nothing. "I thought I'd be drinking alone."

"And miss our dinner date? Come on, you'd think I wouldn't notice? You're nothing if not predictable, Nya."

The quarian sheepishly scrunched in her form and nearly laid her helmeted head upon the table. "Keelah, I had completely forgotten. I'm sorry, Tavre, it's… I've been so distracted lately. I can't believe that I missed it."

"Hey, I'm here now, aren't I?" Tavre gave a mischievous shrug at the same time the bartender arrived with her drink. Tavre downed a quarter of the cocktail in one go, only wincing slightly as the alcohol hammered the back of her head. "Pretty good guess on my part that you were here, eh? No hard feelings, the night's not ruined yet. But what I was asking before was, what were you having?"

"Oh. I think it's called a… _Harbinger?_ I forgot most of the ingredients, but it has a lot of dextro rum."

"Right," Tavre nodded. "Your favorite."

Nya angled the straw into a slot at the base of her helmet, allowing her to take measured sips from the drink at her leisure. Tavre eyed the drink tube - it had a marking on it designating it as "sterilized." She figured that it had to have cost the quarian at least twice as much as it would for any other patron. At times when they ate out at restaurants together Tavre had suggested splitting the cost between them but Nya was too proud to let that happen. She had the money for it but that did not stop Tavre from worrying that the quarian was being taken advantage of. These exorbitant taxes were the last vestiges of racism from an uncaring galaxy - they would eventually wear her down.

"Rough day?" Tavre asked with a sympathetic smile, the quarian's body language effectively affirming her eventual answer.

Nya removed the straw from her helmet carefully. "Something like that."

"Want to talk about it?"

Nya would rather talk about anything else other than her day, but the alcohol did all the talking for her.

"I… saw my husband today."

Tavre took a more measured sip of her drink this time as her eyes narrowed carefully. "Oh. I should have known that's what's got you down. I actually ran into him at the break room earlier today. Wasn't all that impolite. Didn't realize who he was until Kurth mentioned it to me."

"That bastard," Nya muttered as her grip on her drink tube tightened, causing strained noises to quiver from the polymer. "Who does he think he is, coming to me while I'm on duty? I told him I wanted to be left alone. I thought he'd have some respect for my work life, but… _agh!_ "

The tube upended as it squeaked out of Nya's hand, spilling a sticky mix upon the counter. Nya loudly cursed in her own language and held her head in her hands as she mumbled out apologies to the bartender, who had rushed over with a towel to mop things up.

"You might as well get another drink for her," Tavre said to the bartender after the spill had been cleaned up and slid a credit chit in their direction.

"I don't need another drink," Nya protested, her head still on the counter in embarrassment.

Tavre glared back at the bartender and continued to push the credit chit further. "Go get her another drink," she repeated before she added lowly, "A _stronger_ mix, this time." As the bartender rushed off to prepare the cocktail, Tavre called after them, "Make sure it's fully sterilized, too!"

With that taken care of, the asari placed a hand tenderly upon the quarian's shoulder, squeezing through the enviro-suit. She could tell that Nya was really tense - her muscles were hardly tensile, unbearably taut. Nya lifted her head slightly as Tavre began to offer a clumsy one-handed massage, easing the strain upon her.

"Do you know what your husband wanted to talk about?" she murmured close to Nya.

Back hunched, eyes narrowed straight, Nya gave a meek shake of her head. "I don't know what would possess him to come near me. I probably… I don't even want to know."

"He seemed a decent fellow when I talked to him," the asari mused.

Nya fixated Tavre with a glare, eyes now brimming with a deep fury instead of the forlorn sadness that had initially permeated them.

"You shouldn't let that deceive you. No matter how polite he may seem… what he took from me will _never_ redeem him in my eyes."

Tavre released her grip on Nya's shoulder in the universal gesture of surrender. She didn't need to be subjected to her friend's woeful tale - she had heard it in nauseating detail before - about how her husband had killed her daughter (albeit unintentionally). The kind of mental agony Nya was going through was only something that Tavre could barely imagine. She had no kids herself and was not planning on any in the near future, but she could sympathize with the pain that had been inflicted upon Nya for losing a child so young. That motherly instinct resonated within her - an inborn trait present in all women, and she could understand and visualize the dark jagged icicles of this pain repeatedly stab Nya over and over again.

Mercifully, the bartender arrived with Nya's replacement drink and Tavre helped slide it over to her. Nya eyed the tube wistfully for a moment before throwing caution to the winds and inserted her straw back into her helmet so that she could take a gigantic pull. The quarian coughed for a second as the extra dose of alcohol burned her throat and went up her nostrils, but she quickly recovered and kept drinking, eventually putting the strength of the drink out of her mind.

"You're always doing that, you know," Nya hiccoughed after she withdrew from her drink for a bit.

"What?" Tavre asked right before she took a sip of her own drink.

"Inquiring to my problems. It's not fair that I have to recount them to you all the time."

"Am I not allowed to know how you're feeling and what's bothering you? Who would you take me for if I _wasn't_ concerned about you?"

"Hah, you're sweet," Nya swayed upon the stool. "You could probably write a couple volumes with the amount of problems I've had to deal with over the years. I just think that… I don't know, that sometimes all I'm doing is just moping around. But I don't know what else to do. He won't leave me alone. I just… can't get that man out of my head!"

"Who? Sam?"

" _Yessss_ ," the quarian slurred as she slammed her drink onto the counter. "Saaam. That son of a bitch. He's still in my thoughts, taunting me over and over again. No matter how far I run, I can't escape him." Nya hunched further over her drink, eyes wobbling as they fought to stay focused. "Never get married, Tavre. Frankly, it's the best thing ever when you first start out together, but when everything starts to fall apart between you two, you realize that your partner has dug into you with barbs and you have to rip them all out to break free."

The asari arched a brow at that. "Marriage isn't really on my to-do list, Nya. Not right away, at least. But if you've been around two centuries like I have, you'll see the worst of what men have to offer. They all repeat their mistakes eventually to the point where you can never tell them apart. All they can bring you is disappointment, and you'll see that I'm right. I mean, I was with this salarian for a couple years-,"

"Wait," Nya gave a bubbly giggle, her vision swimming in booze. "You were with a salarian? _You?_ How the… how does that even work?"

"Not very well, as it turns out," the asari smirked. "I'll be honest, I didn't go out with him because of his looks. He was a nice guy at first, a little shy, but a great conversationalist once he warmed up to you. Terrible skills in bed though, though I hear that's common with salarians. Poor fool could never even bring me to orgasm - always had to fake it with him."

Nya was now blushing furiously under her helmet as a result of all this girl-talk. She clasped a hand over her vocabulator in a vain effort to prevent her stifled laughs from escaping. Tavre only grinned broader at this reaction and kept going.

"The idiot that I am, I turned a blind eye to all of the red flags that popped up with this salarian until he dropped a sledgehammer blow on me. The guy eventually admitted to me, after two years of dating, that he had never been interested in me as a mate, that he wished to procreate in his people's fashion: with one of his own kind. Can you believe it? He wanted kids, but not _asari_ kids, the fucker. I may have a long lifespan compared to you, but I was still pissed that I wasted two years with that idiot. If only I had realized his lack of potential, I would have dumped his sorry ass a long time ago."

The quarian lifted her drink, her eyes similarly raised in an expression of blind amusement. As the crowd churned behind them and the lights flashed upon the rims of the glasses, Tavre spotted a hint of Nya's facial features through her translucent visor for a micro-second, the moment vanishing before she could even blink in surprise.

"To our shared disappointment," Nya said successfully, her tongue gaining cognizance to speak each syllable clearly before drunkenness addled it again.

"And to the men who perpetuate it," Tavre added with a fair amount of snark.

With a smug sort of satisfaction, both women drained their glasses quickly. Tavre had no trouble tipping her own container upward for the liquid to easily travel down her gullet, but Nya had to take gigantic sips through her straw, a soggy burst of addled confusion punching her with each swallow.

The empty glasses rattled as they were sloppily set upon the bar and Tavre smacked her lips, savoring the taste. Nya leaned back on her stool frightfully at an angle that made it look like she was about to topple over, but she quickly recovered to save herself from an embarrassing fall.

It was unknown to Nya whether Tavre, in seeing her wobble unsteadily upon her seat, had reached out a hand to help steady her friend, but instead of taking Nya's arm or shoulder, or anywhere else that Nya might have considered appropriate, Tavre's hand came to rest on the quarian's thigh, just inches away from her waist.

Heat blossomed in Nya's cheeks and she froze, mortified. Tavre continued to keep her hand there, her thumb gently rubbing along the outside of the quarian's suit. Nya's breathing hitched as the asari's hand slowly started to trail upward, sliding across the textured material of the suit.

Even in her intoxicated state, a bubble of clarity managed to surround her brain, its defenses strong but faltering as multiple bad decisions immediately began to press upon all sides.

It had been so long since she had been touched there… touched like that. Only one person had ever done so, but with her permission. As the radiant tingles began to increase in intensity and frequency, a small moan nearly burst from her throat but Nya clamped her jaw down at the last second, swallowing the note down. Bile surged in her stomach and she jerked reflexively, shaking Tavre's hand off.

The asari gave a blank stare and Nya's eyes widened in horror. Multiple emotions twisted together in the quarian's mind, confounding the words that she was going to say next. Subconsciously starting to shake, Nya nervously hopped off the stool, a cold stream of sobriety sobering her up good and proper.

"I'm… I'm s-sorry," she stammered out as she began to back out into the throng. "I'll… I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."

Before Tavre could voice a protest, Nya's next steps pushed her into the addled mob and she disappeared instantly within the maze of bodies, a wall of sound crushing her with sonic force. Blinking, the asari stupidly continued to stare where she had seen her friend last, only giving up after half a minute when it seemed that Nya wouldn't be returning.

With a shrug, Tavre turned around and gave the bartender a gesture for another drink to be served up, fresh from the neon glow of the endless alcohol shelves lining the far wall.

"Ah, well," Tavre sighed, but it was with a tiny smile regardless. "Next time."

* * *

 _The next day_

I had given myself the night to mull things over after having to concede that the events of yesterday had been less than satisfactory in every aspect. Sleep had done little to quell my raging thoughts - I couldn't get the image out of my head of Nya staring through the closing doors of the elevator, with nothing less than pure malevolence sent screaming in my direction just from her eyes. It's hard to fathom how such enmity could arise from a spouse, after years of being doted on with the exact opposite of extreme emotions.

I may have already known the extent of Nya's animosity toward me, but if I hadn't then yesterday would serve as one hell of a reminder.

All things considered, I had received the subliminal message that Nya explicitly did not want to lay eyes on me whatsoever. As much as I tried to detach myself, to cut those last cords tying us together, I found it impossible to do so. It was no use - I had been given a spoon to slice through diamond tethers. I couldn't just let go of the memory of my wife so easily, of the best moments in the heat of our love together, even though I knew that the two of us had every reason to be like this.

But… when Kurth had told me that Nya had been sinking lower and lower into her wallowing depression to the point that it was affecting her work, it was hard for me to simply act as a bystander. I had deeply loved this woman once, it was natural for me to want to see her succeed. If she was in trouble, my first instinct was going to be to see if she needed assistance. Stupid of me, my chivalrous side was of little use here. Nya's hatred of me would push back against any comfort that I could provide… if I actually had the capacity to provide Nya comfort anymore.

No… all I could bring her was pain. Pain, and the memories of a beautiful life we once shared, which would only dredge up a deeper agony with the power to render her catatonic again.

I could only focus on one major problem at a time, so in spite of how I felt, I had to reluctantly shelve my issues with Nya for the time being. There was still the fact that I was going to have to contend with Eyzn sooner or later and I still had learned nothing about the man that could give me an edge. He was my top priority, all things considered.

Eyzn had me by the balls on this one. I hated being the butt of the joke in this case, especially since I had no idea what the joke was about. But with no current direction, perhaps I was only continuing to play right into Eyzn's hands. So… that's the dilemma: work the problem or do nothing. The only question is: what is Eyzn expecting me to do? I could only blindly grope through the fog for so long before reaching anything tangible.

Left destitute for any subtle clues as to where my path should proceed, I found myself back upon my old premises after my crappy night's sleep: Huerta Memorial Hospital. I was not here to work as my suspension was still in play for at least a month, pending a formal inquiry in the wake of my assaulting of a C-Sec officer. My purpose here was not to beg for my job back, as my pride could not be drained quite so easily, but to pursue a bit of moral support while simultaneously delivering a warning.

Sagan continued to follow me, ever loyal to his "master," the lost puppy that he was. Honestly, I could probably deal with my problems without the geth constantly at my side, but having a bodyguard, especially at this point in time, was probably not such a bad idea. Plus, Sagan always seemed more upbeat - as much as a geth could simulate such an expressive emotion - whenever he was out and about with me. Having a task to accomplish has been proven to focus an individual more, at any rate.

I passed through the front lobby of the hospital and into the waiting wings, flashing my credentials to the receptionist with an air of impatience. I barely slowed to allow them time to see if I was part of the staff - my attitude and gruff manner probably helped in emphasizing my fickle nature as one of the high-strung doctors put on residency here. I was allowed through with nary a protest, as was Sagan.

After taking the elevator up a floor, I was now in the hallway where my office was still located (as long as they had not rented it out to anyone else in my absence). I did indeed pass by the door with my name printed on it, but that was not the room I was looking for. Instead, I wandered over to the next door and firmly rapped upon it with the back of my hand, a clutch of breath hitching in the middle of my throat.

"Come in," a flanged voice said.

Actually, I had started barging through the door before the person on the other side had even finished speaking. That was probably why Rie had such a surprised look on her face as I entered. Either that, or she was not expecting to see me after our less than stellar parting a couple days ago.

"Sam?" she exclaimed at her desk, clad in her white and black striped doctor's outfit that fit snugly around her body.

"The one and only," I added as I immediately claimed the chair on the opposite side of her desk. I sighed as I sat my frame into it, a hand cupping my chin thoughtfully while Sagan silently shuffled into a nearby corner. "Not interrupting anything important, am I?"

Rie deactivated her holographic console with a grand wave of her hand. "Nothing of utmost importance, at least."

If my own office was a prime example of the bare aesthetic, then Rie had me considerably beat. There was nothing in her room that was out of place - not a single scrap of paper was out of alignment, all the picture frames were straight, and there was even no trash in her waste bin. Every square inch of her desk was meticulously clean and proper to the point where it adopted a soft sheen, exacerbated by the light filtering in from the Presidium, cool hues of green and blue gently washing over the dull surfaces only to be pounded into submission by the harsh light from the filaments installed in the ceiling.

Rie was looking much better than the last time I had seen her. Her clan markings were pristine upon her facial carapace, allowing the wheat-yellow of her eyes to shine a bit brighter. She adopted a softer gaze before she drooped her head downward by a fraction of an inch. "Listen, Sam, I'm glad you stopped by. I really should apologize for-,"

I held up a hand in a magnanimous fashion, my face set. "No need," I interrupted gently. "I'm not going to chastise you for speaking your mind."

"Sam, the other day I was being so rude to you. I… I called you an asshole!"

"I wasn't in a stellar mood, either, remember? I deserved each and every word out of your mouth. You don't have to apologize to me at all. Can we… at least start things over again?"

Rie's hands stopped their miniscule twitching and her eyes caught mine with the faintest glimmer of respite shared between us.

"Gladly," Rie said with no small amount of relief. "I've been fretting over that moment for the past two days now, you know."

"Rie, you really didn't have to."

"Hey, how could I have known?" she shrugged, cracking a soft expression. "Your given attitude is pretty hard to predict from day to day."

I sheepishly scratched at the back of my head. "I know. I'm trying to work on that. So what were you really working on when I stormed my way in? You know I'm always interested in being kept in the loop for these things."

"Eh," the turian murmured as she threw up an image from her console. "Boring stuff, mostly. There's been an influx of patents regarding this new compound that can safely disable a person's circulatory system without having them expire. The drug essentially keeps the person alive in a coma, but with the faintest of heart activity, similar to how a person behaves while suffering from hypothermia. The original company that made this had their patent expire and now a bunch of copycats are trying to get in on the action."

I didn't notice, but Sagan behind me studied the chemical formula intently before Rie put it away and displayed a video file from her stash of things to do.

The file itself showcased a dish of cells underneath a microscope, filmed in rapid time-lapse photography. They looked like normal, healthy human red blood cells, bulbous red disks plump with oxygen. However, all too soon, the cells began to blacken and shrivel up within the dish at a rate faster than what I knew was a normal rate of decay, based on the time stamp situated in the corner.

"And this is the sort of stuff that we're concentrating most on at the moment," Rie said as she now indicated the video with a grim look. "Flash cloning. You remember the problems with flash cloning? That the nucleic acid bonds of flash-cloned cells deteriorate at a rapid pace? The quicker you grow the cells, the sooner they die off. Well, there are still several labs desperately trying to make breakthroughs on this kind of stuff but all of the samples they provide us still contain signs of rapid aging. I think they're trying to prove that flash cloning can be a viable medical process in the future."

"Like that's going to happen," I snorted, remembering the process Rie was talking about. "There's no longevity in it. Cloning right now is only used to grow body parts, like what happened to Nya on Rannoch, and no one is going to accept a heart, a lung, or a limb knowing that within a month it'll just rot right back off."

"I know," Rie nodded. "Why do you think Huerta's not funding it? I'm pretty much the first line of defense for these foolhardy projects, so I'm the one to spot the idiocy right away." The turian gave a forlorn sigh as she relaxed in her chair, the holographic images fading between us as the console dimmed from inaction. "I'm glad you came by, Sam. It's nice even just talking about work with you. It's good that we can move past our last argument like adults."

I uttered a withering laugh, briefly looking away. "Adults, eh? Haven't heard that term describe me in some time. Wish that same sort of maturity could have come to me yesterday, now that I think about it."

Rie's yellow eyes narrowed in suspicion, her jaw opening slightly. "Oh no. What did you do?"

"I… uh…" Again I breathed a savage chuckle, now fully aware of how foolish I must have been. "I might have run into Nya yesterday."

" _Spirits_ , Sam…" Rie laid her head in her arms, dreading what I was going to say next.

"No, it's not what you think," I defended. "I was at C-Sec yesterday because… well, it's a long story, but the point is that I went over to talk with Nya and… she saw me and immediately started to leave. I almost caught up to her in the elevator bay but she stopped me before I could get on and… that was it."

Rie raised her head wearily. "I guess that outcome was better than I initially would have thought. You had me worried that you had completely blown things up between you two."

"As if things could get any worse?" I dryly retorted, my throat feeling rather dry and chapped.

"With such little faith like that, you're not going to get anywhere with her, Sam. I hope you understand that I _want_ you two to be together again."

"Want does not equate to get, Rie."

The turian gave a deeper sigh, her chest visibly wilting. "Did you guys say anything at all between you two yesterday?"

"Why yes," I said in a faux-cheerful tone, clearly being a tad cheeky. "Well, Nya said a single sentence to me before I had a chance to say anything back."

"What was it?"

"I believe it was something along the lines of, ' _Get away from me_.'"

If a turian could change expressions as much as a human, then I daresay that Rie's would have fallen five feet at that.

"Aw… damn it," Rie groaned as she rubbed helplessly at her eyes.

"Yeah, see what I have to fucking deal with?" I growled. "How can I possibly make things any better when my own wife won't even talk to me? It's like she's trying to pretend that I don't exist anymore! All for something that I…" The words died in my throat as a savage urge yanked upon my limbs. " _Fuck!_ "

I abruptly stood and, in a frustrated bout, kicked the chair that I had been sitting on, overturning it and sending it skidding across the polished tile floor, just inches away from where Sagan was standing. Whereas the geth gave a placid stare at the whole affair, Rie jolted in her chair, aghast at my rapid change in temperament.

Immediately, I felt bad. Acting out was not doing me any good and it wasn't right to take all this out on Rie's furniture, not to mention scaring her like this. With yet more guilt piled on the mound in my head, I walked over to where the overturned chair lay, righted it and set it back where I had found it before using it once more in the manner for which it had been intended.

"I'm sorry about that, Rie," I said with all sincerity. "I've been under so much stress lately that I'm having trouble figuring things out. You have… no idea… how much it kills me to see Nya look upon me with such loathing. That's the frustrating part, because I can understand Nya's position for doing so, yet I'd rather blind myself to my past mistakes. I just don't know what else I can do… and it infuriates me that I have no idea."

Rie paused for a second before she walked around her desk to sit upon it and she placed a gloved hand upon my shoulder sympathetically.

"I feel for the both of you," she said. "I really do. You already know that it hurts me to see you guys like this. If I knew what the key was to you and Nya overcoming your grief and getting back together, then I would give it to you in a heartbeat!"

"Raise my kid from the dead," I scowled. "See if that helps."

Rie looked like she was about to backhand me, for she had adopted quite a disappointed stare in my direction.

"Don't say things like that, Sam. I can't help you if you shut everyone out. I know you're still beating yourself up over your daughter's death, but that doesn't mean that you have to destroy everything in the wake of that! I just… damn it, Sam… still no one knows what your daughter died from. Germs, disease, SIDS... It might not have ever been your fault!"

The tear in my throat was throbbing quite hard now, and I was imagining blood spilling into my gullet, choking me as I proceeded to drown in my own life force. The imaginary knife at my heart gave a subtle twist.

"No baby… not even a quarian baby… dies without a reason. I was in the room when my daughter was out of her bubble. Her immune system was not acclimated to me yet. She couldn't have died from anything else." I shakily fixated Rie with a hard look, sweat springing up upon my brow. "I _did_ kill her, Rie. Don't chase a false hope on my behalf."

Nya's hand was gently upon my shoulder again, her rigid fingers resting upon my body. "But Nya should know the extent of your remorse. You've paid more than enough for your guilt - I don't want to see you suffering any longer! You and Nya loved each other very much once. Do you really think that things are really so irreparable for you guys?"

I withered at my friend's touch and I had to bitterly look away for a moment. Maybe it was the fact that the words that Rie spoke held nothing but the complete truth that caused me to turn away, momentarily torn with emotion. Maybe it was regret at the reminiscence of a life once lived. Maybe it was hope that such a state could be attained again. Who knows at this point? Certainly not I. But, even though things in the end might not have a happy ending for me, the support was definitely appreciated on my end.

"Thanks, Rie," I enabled a sad, heavy smile to materialize. "But I really think that there's nothing more that I can do..."

Just then, the door slid open as a tall, dark skinned human chose that opportunity to twirl past the threshold with an odd bouquet of flowers clutched in one hand while a flowing glass vase was held in the other.

"Honey," the man said in a sing-song voice, his eyes shut for dramatic effect, "have I got something for yoooou- oh _shit_."

Apparently the man had not realized that Rie had not been alone in the room once he had finally opened his eyes. Instead of the turian sitting by herself at her desk, the human had not expected to find both me and a geth occupying the place at the same time and he stuttered in place, fiercely trying not to blush in his sudden embarrassment.

"Hey, Chandler," I waved a hand, fighting my own reflex to grin, my previous heavy visage disappearing before the man could notice. I pointed at the flowers while the human remained frozen in place. "Tulips, eh? For _me?_ You shouldn't have. Although, I was always more of a fan of orchids, myself."

The man finally broke out into a nervous smile, relieved that he had stumbled onto a familiar face like mine and not some random patient that Rie could have been in the middle of a consultation with. "Dream on, Sam. Had I known you were here, I would gladly have gotten some for you. Didn't see any orchids, though, but they did have a great deal on the tulips."

"Perish the thought," I said while Chandler set the flowers into the vase before pushing it surreptitiously into the corner, just out of sight behind Rie's body.

Chandler then walked over, lightly nudged Rie on the arm and sat down beside her upon the desk in front of me. Rie's expression warmed in thanks for the gift and she subtly touched the back of the human's hand, knowingly keeping her emotions on the down-low while I was in the room, both knowing the kind of dire straits that I was in.

It wasn't much, but I was very grateful for their thoughtfulness.

Chandler was someone I had known for quite a while now. He was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered like me, and due to the fact that he had previously been in the army as an NCO during the war, he was in great physical form. Due to his upbringing, he spoke in a clipped English accent, but bits and pieces of various slang from all corners of the Earth occasionally wormed their way into his vocabulary, thanks in part to the multiculturalism of today's interconnected society.

Along with Rie, Chandler had also been present for our little getaway to Rannoch and all the fun that had ensued while we had been there. In the interim since then, he had married Rie and had gotten himself a managerial role at an environmental non-profit organization. The very model of a working family - two successful mates that were cross-species to boot. Now, why did that seem so familiar to me?

"So…" Chandler began after some hesitation while he rubbed a hand over his shorn hair, "did I barge in on anything sensitive? You guys want me to leave?"

Rie and I both shook our heads. "No real point," I shrugged. "Rie's just going to tell you anyway."

"Ah, I see. Talking about Nya, yes?" Chandler asked, his voice low and sensitive. "You guys still having problems?"

"She's not the only one I'm having trouble with right now," I sighed as I got up from my chair and began to pace in a tight circle. I then grimly turned my head toward my friends. "I didn't come here for a pity party, you know. I have to warn you: Eyzn's back. He's here, on the Citadel."

Both Rie and Chandler's faces grew concerned and dark. " _That_ maniac?" Rie whispered. "He's here? Now?"

I nodded in affirmation. "The guy's got a vendetta on me, that's for sure. I ran into him yesterday morning, actually. Before I headed over to Nya. Bastard proceeded to slap me around a bit before he broke my finger as a reminder of his… seriousness."

My hands clenched as I recalled the harsh snapping sound of my bone breaking. I took a quick glance downward at the healing digit. The brace had been removed this morning as the medi-gel that I had applied had set the bone nicely all throughout yesterday. There was a little bit of resistance every time I tried to bend my finger, but that was pretty much normal atrophy from keeping the finger motionless for a day. Brutal as the injury was, I would be back to normal within a week.

"I thought we had put this shit behind us," Chandler mused bitterly. "Do you even know exactly what he wants to do with you?"

"Search me. That's pretty much what I've been trying to figure out since our little reunion. He's prepared himself very well, actually. Somehow, he managed to stockpile his own little private army made completely out of quarians and mechs and has also formed a sort of squad of colorful individuals that all happen to be out for my blood. I think he took the death of his mother pretty hard."

"And after all you're going through with Nya… your daughter…" Rie choked out. "Sam… what can we do to help?"

"Yeah," Chandler stood from the desk, jaw set. "This asshole's got another thing coming if he thinks that he can run riot and hurt my friends without consequences."

A ghost of a smile flitted across my face before something yanked it back. Touched from the support that I had been receiving, I nearly felt a tear spring forth before I mustered the strength to have it evaporate en route to my eye.

"Guys, I… I really do appreciate your loyalty, but this doesn't have to involve you. I'm the one that Eyzn has the grievance with. There's no need for you two to put yourself in the crosshairs. I just came by to make sure that you were aware so that you don't get surprised later on down the line."

"Fuck that," Chandler exclaimed.

"That's right," Rie sprung to her feet, her natural turian height enabling her to tower over me. "You can't expect us to sit idly by with Eyzn running amok, can you?"

Frantically, I rubbed at my eyes. "No, I should have rephrased - I'm not expecting you not to do anything, but I don't want you foolishly risking your lives when it is not necessary! For all the chaos Eyzn is promised, one thing that is certain to be on his itinerary is him killing me. End of story. I know he wants me dead, to suffer, and I don't want him to extend his reach onto the both of you. Can you at least understand where I'm going with this?"

The human and turian couple both gave sage, albeit reluctant, nods. It was easy to understand their plight - why wouldn't they stand by when someone that they care about is under threat? It would make no sense to be an idle bystander at that point but there was a limit as to when the threat to their lives would outweigh the cost of lending a helping hand. I just worried that, if they chose to assist, that such a limit would be unknown to all of us until it was too late.

That's usually the moment where one tends to lose everything.

I knew that better than anyone in this room. I have a habit of underestimating the lines I cannot cross.

"Look," I said, "I came here to warn you two of what was going on. I've done that. I don't want any of you getting hurt, but I also want you to be on your guard in case you start to notice anything suspicious happening around you. I know that Eyzn is looking to hurt me most of all, but I'm not taking chances on him extending his reach towards others I might care about. I don't need your help right now - I might, but not at this moment."

Rie and Chandler looked hurt at that. I could see the turian's mouth open ever so slightly, perhaps to voice a useless protest, before she closed it in light of the overbearing futility of such an action. I was still the same stubborn son-of-a-bitch that could dish out my own valid reasoning, complete with the whys and the why nots, to the point where I would be completely immovable with my feelings on the matter. If Rie or Chandler could pinpoint a weakness, then they would press upon it until I shattered, but as much as they wanted to offer a challenge, both of them knew that they could not dissuade me from my position.

"Wait a moment," Rie finally said as I had started to turn to leave. "What about Nya?"

I stopped feet away from the door. Feet away from peace of mind.

"...What _about_ her?" I managed.

"Does she know? About Eyzn being back? If so, she needs to be warned-,"

"What do you think I was trying to _do_ at C-Sec, Rie?" I lifted a finger in the turian's direction as my mouth twisted into a raw grimace. "You think I was going over to Nya just for the hell of it? Just to say, 'Hi, how are you doing?' Uh-uh. I went over there and tried to talk to her but she walked out before I could warn her of anything."

" _I_ could warn her. Let me do it in your stead. She doesn't hat-"

Rie immediately clamped her jaw shut, fearful that she might have overstepped her bounds. Overcome with trepidation, I took a tender, stalking step forward as I simultaneously arched an eyebrow, trying to imagine that I had misheard her.

"She doesn't… _what_ , Rie?"

Terrified, Rie shook her head timidly, but I uttered a cruel laugh instead.

"Don't be shy. It's the truth. She doesn't _hate_ you. In that vein, she doesn't hate me either. No, Nya _despises_ me. So, if you think that you can have some luck talking to Nya about this whole Eyzn business, by all means, try. I'm not sure if Nya can bring herself to be in the same room with me for very long, so maybe my attempts are an exercise in futility."

"It… it…" Rie gulped in between shaking gasps, "...it should be… _you_ who tells her, Sam. I presumed too much. I can't convey the danger to Nya as much as you could."

"But what use would it be if my pleas were only to fall on deaf ears? I might try my luck with Nya again, but I'm going to state for the record that I don't expect much to happen because of it. Her hatred of me might just cloud any shred of reason she has left in her. If that's the case, then I might have to get used to the idea of never seeing her again for the rest of my life. Hell, I might not even care if that's the way things are going to be."

It surprised even me at how easily the lie managed to roll off my tongue - the words literal candy to my brain, but ripe with a pungent aftertaste. Images were able to froth greedily to the surface of my mind - fantasies of my own experiences lying bloodied in a hospital with a hole in my stomach, to the dull vibrations of sawing through a limb underwater as the color red filled my vision, to the form of a suited quarian lying crumpled, broken, and dying in an alley.

The imaginary knife in my chest grew ever closer to my heart, radiating pain as it chewed through the muscle layer.

Despite the self-inflicted wounds that I had received through voicing the lie, it had the desired effect upon Rie and Chandler, their faces blanching considerably as perhaps one facet of their mental image of me had withered away to dust. Today, they may not know it now, but they just lost a little bit of respect for me at this time.

"Sam," Rie begged. "You have to keep trying. She will listen to you. She always has."

"Always?" I mocked. Lies against lies. Neither side could bring solace if we kept this up.

The turian flushed, or what passed as their emotional equivalent. "You're not the only one beating yourself up, you know. I've shared more words recently than you have with Nya, so I have some idea of just how much she's suffering. If Eyzn's out for you, then he's definitely out for Nya too. He'll _destroy_ her."

"Am I to blame myself if that happens?" I asked coldly. "If she refuses to heed my warnings, am I still guilty?"

Rie seemed to be silently asking herself as to how I could be so callous before she swiftly walked around her desk and scribbled something onto a note before she walked back and roughly handed it to me.

"Maybe you should try and learn all the facts before you open your mouth," Rie growled. "That way you might be able to make some progress."

I looked down at the note and saw that Rie had written only one word on it. _Duloxetine-D_. From the nomenclature, it was obviously some kind of medicine, but I was lost as to what significance this particular one had. I glanced up at Rie for clarification.

"What the hell is duloxetine-D?"

" _That_ ," Rie tapped the note, "is one of the many SNRIs we have in stock in Huerta. A Serotonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor. For dextros, of course. I'd keep an eye out for a capsule the next time you're in your apartment."

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait," I held up a hand as I scrunched my eyes shut in disbelief. "A… an SNRI? I… I don't know what you're getting at. I don't understand. Why the fuck should I be on the lookout for a goddamn medicine capsule with… _this_ in my apartment? _Nya's_ apartment? SNRIs are _depression_ meds-"

Once again, my mouth outran my brain and the sentence I was in the middle of speaking was unceremoniously cut off in the middle as realization finally crept upon me.

"How long has she been taking them?" my voice came out in a breathy whisper, hoarse, as the note was crumpled in my hand. "How _long_ , Rie?"

The turian stuck her chin out proudly, as though she was ready to face the consequences willingly with her fear of me completely pushed down. "Around four months now."

Any more force clenching my jaw and my teeth would be ground to powder. "And… why… did Nya tell you that she was taking these meds? How did _you_ find out?"

"Because I was the one who _prescribed_ them to her."

"You… _WHAT?!_ " I yelled.

Were I a more impulsive man, I would have shoved Rie into the wall, my hand at her neck, to pry forth a solid explanation. Alas, I still retained enough cognizance to realize the folly of treating a friend so brutally, especially with her husband in the same room.

"What do you mean, you _prescribed_ my wife depression meds?!" I said in a raised voice, managing to cower the taller alien. "Four _months_ ago?! How the fu-... that makes no sense! You're not authorized to prescribe those kinds of meds! Your background is in _orthopedics_ and _genetics!_ You aren't even qualified to be working with mood disorders, for Christ's sake!"

For a second, Rie's jaw quivered ever so slightly before she gained the courage to stare defiantly back at me.

"If you had seen the state she was in, Sam… even though she pushed you away, she still couldn't be consoled. _That's_ how I knew she was miserable. She came to me for help about a month after you split, she begged me to do something. She was being completely serious - I've seen people with lesser symptoms be prescribed stronger meds before. I couldn't just stand by even then, so I filled out a form and told Nya the locations of a few pharmacies on the Citadel where I knew their prescription vetting was notoriously lax. Some of these places would rather make a few easy credits than have to send possible customers away, you know? In the end, capitalism always influences the economic trends. But don't you see? I _had_ to help her and this was the only way I felt that I could make a difference."

"So these pharmacies," I waved the note in the air, "they just take these prescriptions and don't even bother to look? As far as you know, Nya did get her meds?"

"She never said otherwise to me. So, I'm assuming she did. Besides, I've noticed stark improvements over the last few months. If she had not come to me, Nya would be _suicidal_ right now, mark my words."

It was almost too much. Bad enough that this had been occurring behind my back, but it was even worse realizing that my wife might be actually _be_ suffering from depression. If that was the case, then she was even farther gone than I had figured - way farther than me at this point. Some of my suspicions about her behavior could be confirmed by this revelation, but it was not like I had ever wanted them to be true.

Stung by Rie's revelation, I found myself short of breath and combating increasing bouts of dizziness. The air in the room seemed to turn stale and the iron taste of blood became more apparent on my tongue. I had to get out of here.

Wordlessly, I gestured for Sagan to follow as I stomped towards the door, intent on leaving. Rie edged in behind me to get one last word before I was gone, terrified that my wrath would be upon her now.

"She needed treatment, Sam! Would you really judge her for seeking me out?"

After I passed into the hallway, I managed one last look before the door automatically closed between us.

"I judge _you_ for waiting four months to tell me this!" I rasped.

* * *

There was a stillness in the air after Sam had left that was so tangible that it could have been cut with a knife. Rie and Chandler were left staring dumbly at the now-shut door, half-expecting their friend to barge back in after having calmed down a bit, but both knew that they had probably seen the last of the man for today.

Rie wilted and scratched at a mandible in disgust as she sat back down at her desk, slumped in defeat. Chandler continued to stand, his body ever so slightly swaying as he teetered on deciding what to do next.

"He might have had a point, Rie," Chandler said as he appraised the shut door. "Was it right of us to keep Sam in the dark?"

Rie threw up her hands in exasperation. "I was going to lose with this choice either way. Nya chose to go to me out of discretion and I would have lost her trust had I blabbed this fact to Sam immediately after the fact. Either way, I would get blamed. Should I have said something sooner? Maybe. Maybe that's what I should have done. But… I don't know..."

Chandler reached across the desk and began to idly spin a pen between his fingers as he looked at his wife thoughtfully. "One of those big ' _what ifs_ ,' eh?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"And the thing about Eyzn returning? That's some pretty heavy stuff."

"I fear that it's too much for Sam to handle," Rie grimaced as she stood to look through the windowed wall out into the ever-bright front of the Presidium down below, through a curtain of hanging moss. She squinted in the harsh lighting as she slowly inhaled. "He's estranged from his wife, he lost a child, and now his brother-in-law wants him dead? Any one of those situations would be enough to drive anyone crazy."

The pen between Chandler's fingers fell out onto the floor and the human made a quiet curse as he bent to pick it up. "I'd want nothing more than to help Sam out, but I really don't know much about Eyzn as well as he does. I wouldn't know where to start."

"Neither would I," Rie mused, a fierce glimmer now twinkling in her eye as she turned her body slightly, throwing half her face into subtle shadow. "But there is something else. Something that Sam mentioned that seemed a little… off."

"About Eyzn?"

"No," Rie said as she hurried over to her console. "Not about him. About Sam and his family. I just have the funniest feeling..."

From within the file explorer in the console, Rie was able to pull up a file titled " _McLeod_." There were three subfolders within, each containing detailed medical documents on each member of the family. The subfolders were titled, " _Samuel_ ," " _Nyareth_ ," and " _Unknown_ " respectively. It was on the file titled " _Unknown_ " that Rie selected and transferred over to her personal omni-tool.

"What are you thinking?" Chandler asked as he watched Rie pull up a wealth of literature upon the device at her wrist, pages and pages of words all glowing with a golden fire, lighting up both of their eyes.

"I'm thinking," Rie whispered as she flitted through the ataxia of words for the clues she desired, her eyes rapidly scanning line after line, "that there's more to this story than what we've been told."

* * *

 **A/N: Fun Fact: The breathable alcohol concept, briefly touched upon in describing the bar at the beginning of this chapter, is actually not science-fiction. It was a reference to a bar in London, Alcoholic Architectures, that had managed to pull off the same feat by having patrons be able to breathe in a cocktail within an extremely humid room. Sadly, the bar has been closed since July 2016, so you won't be able to partake in its features any time soon.**

 **Back to the story at hand, I suspect that you will find the upcoming chapter to be quite... interesting, shall we say. I'm going to keep my mouth shut on further matters, so feel free to speculate all you want.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Hospital Visit: "Motoko" by Lorne Balfe from the film _Ghost in the Shell (2017)_**


	8. Chapter 6: Thy Own Hand

Stillness fell upon me as I was blanketed with silence. I was a mote upon the dark, an insignificant speck trapped within a bubble of atmosphere as I was whisked off to a corner of a much larger construction. Trapped in the skycar, I folded my hands over my lap, breathing in slowly as I began to relax as the transport's thick seals allowed for no stimuli other than light to flow forth.

"Once more, I find myself at the beginning," I whispered to myself as a bloated mixture of stars and glistening windows streamed across the skycar's canopy.

Despite my calm outward appearance right now, I was half-expecting all hell to break loose on the ride back over to the docks. Go through a couple days of extreme nerve-wracking conditions and one's sense of perception and paranoia tends to get a little highly skewed. At this point, I would not be surprised if I would suddenly come under a terrorist attack in space, knowing how determined my pursuer was to break me. As it stood, I was constantly in a state of tension, eyes darting every which way like I had a perpetual caffeine buzz.

I figured that the aggregate experiences of this day were not going to go any better and that I should spend the rest of the day on board my ship, drinking myself to sleep. Alcohol, as a depressant, always did wonders for calming myself… perhaps a bit _too_ well.

It was a short hop to the docks where my ship was parked from the hospital where I had left my friends, the kind of brevity that I relished quite strongly. Sagan rode shotgun in the skycar and, seemingly sensing my desire for a little peace and quiet, chose not to add his observations of the past few hours to the raging torrent that comprised my thoughts. The geth had most definitely improved in his timing and reading of the past few situations – these subtle gestures that organics give off to drive conversations are nearly imperceptible to a synthetic mind, but they exist nonetheless, and Sagan had either figured out all my tics or had wisely discovered that I was not in a talking mood right now.

With an imperceptible grumble, I extricated myself from the skycar upon stiff muscles at the moment it landed at the entrance to the sprawling dock walkways. The guard stationed at the gate did not even so much as glance in my direction as I edged past – several body scanning devices would do all the looking for him to make sure that I was in the registry as a known client. Lit by the ever-present glow of Earth, now that I was within range of the main star field, I was guided to my ship by the holographic arrows that pointed the way along the railings, a colorful accompaniment in case I forgot where I lived.

Even with such a grand sight of the planet upon which you originated from, sadly one does become jaded to it when it is in full view every single day of your waking life. Back when I first came to this universe, I recall that I spent hours just staring out at the stars on the Citadel, situated upon an observation deck, sometimes with a snack, just watching the heavens in awe. Now… I barely stopped to glance at most celestial bodies these days.

I had thought that I would never get tired of such a view, but very rarely was I awed anymore by this sort of natural splendor. I guess I was sorely wrong about a great many things in my life – things that I had assumed I would never tire of. Apparently I'm just the living embodiment of irony.

The meeting with Rie and Chandler had given me a bad taste in my mouth. It was not like I was expecting any major revelations to be gleaned from our shared brain power, but it had managed to serve as a reminder that my life and the lives of others around me were careening in directions unknown and completely out of control from my influence. With the recent revelation about my wife coupled with Rie and Chandler's overall impotence in helping to shed some light on my problems, I had walked away from the hospital in an even worse mood than before.

Eyzn was moving closer with his malicious intent. Nya was suffering from depression and becoming an agonizing itch in my mind that I had to confront sooner or later. I could not keep both forces at bay at the same time. If my gaze were to go and focus on one of these problems, the other would slip away from me and wreak total devastation while it was in my blind spot.

"And yet," I said lowly, "I'll end up losing both battles anyway."

As I approached the gateway that led to my craft, occasionally passing under the shadow from the additional dock walkways above, I was still debating exactly what I should do the moment I stepped aboard. Should I spend about an hour smoking in solitude, hoping that some clarity might find its way through the murk in my brain? Or should I drink myself into a coma in an attempt to blot out my existence for the rest of the day so that I can keep the sum total of my emotional state in the low red?

Whatever my thoughts on the matter would be, I would end up doing none of them because the second I entered my yacht and headed for the kitchen, I spotted something upon the table that stopped me cold in my tracks. Goosebumps immediately proceeded to spring up on the back of my neck, running down my spine to my knees, hitching my breath in place.

"What… the… hell?" I breathed as Sagan similarly halted behind me.

Upon the lone kitchen table, a small round object sat innocently in the center, devoid of any other obstructions cluttering my line of sight to it. It was about the size of an apple, its surface glassy with a thick amber color deep within muted by the top layer. I've seen such devices before but never once felt the need to own one, myself.

Cautiously, I stepped forward as I moved to examine the Orb. Orbs were personal holographic devices, some even capable of transmitting QEC-level messages. They certainly were not cheap and although purchasing one would not break the bank for me, I knew for a definite fact that I had never purchased an Orb before. No, from what I could tell, this Orb had been placed deliberately (not to mention surreptitiously) upon my table and properly positioned so that I would notice it immediately upon entering the kitchen. But how could an Orb find its way into my ship, and for what purpose?

Unless… someone had broken their way into this ship to make sure that I would see this.

As I approached the Orb, its surface suddenly became ablaze with a searing hexagonal pattern of blue light for a moment, triggered by my proximity and completely encompassing it. Then, before I could lift a hand in its direction, four bright yellow words jumped out across from the Orb's projector to slowly rotate around the sphere in a lazy circle, each word going so slow that it scraped by in a taunting gait.

PLAY ME, TOUGH GUY, it read.

I dared not take another step closer and threw out a hand behind me to make sure that Sagan didn't stray within its proximity either.

 _Play me, tough guy._

Christ, what have I gotten myself sucked into?

"Fuck…" I breathed as I fought to stay calm, finding it hard to tear my gaze away from the blazing words. Not an easy thing for me to accomplish, now that I understood the implied mortal danger that I had been placed in. For all I knew, I had just walked into a trap.

" _Oh my god…"_ I uttered in a choked voice, trying desperately not to panic. I clutched a hand to my heart, finding that it was pounding a mighty war rhythm _._ Already I was scared shitless, and for good reason.

 _Play me, tough guy._

He was using my own words against me, the son of a bitch. Who else did I call "tough guy" when I was the one running my lip? I can think of only one person in recent memory.

"Sagan," I raised a shaking hand towards the Orb, "tell me that you can detect if that thing isn't a bomb."

"We can analyze if this device has been modified for use as a weapon," Sagan confirmed. "Remain stationary."

The geth gently pushed me to the side as he proceeded to subject it to an intense round of scanning. Sagan's blue optics faintly whirred as the geth appeared to "look" upon the Orb with an intensity almost approaching fascination. It took only three seconds before Sagan was able to provide a reply.

"There appear to be no traces of residue that would otherwise indicate that the device has been loaded with explosive or otherwise hazardous materials," Sagan reported as he stood back upright. "The translucent covering on the Orb permits us to confirm that this device has not been tampered with in any form."

"Yeah, but who put this on the ship? I didn't see any signs of forced entry and all the doors were securely locked."

"Unknown, but we are accessing the logs from the _Obtruder_. The vessel did register its main airlock doors opening 1.5 hours ago before closing within a seven-minute span. The handshake protocols from the entrance command sent from an omni-tool appear to be corrupted. We can hypothesize that an individual forcibly made their way into the craft by spoofing your biometric signals. This would eliminate the possibility of an intruder physically damaging systems to gain entrance."

Something Sagan had said didn't sit right with me. I then nudged the geth's armored shoulder urgently. "Start searching the ship. Tell me if anything is out of order."

"Samuel?" the geth asked, confused.

" _Now_ , damn it," I said as I knelt down by some of the kitchen cupboards while already starting to throw things onto the floor in a hurry. "Someone's been in my ship for seven minutes. That's too much time for them just to leave an Orb on the table. I need to know if they left us any more 'gifts.' So the Orb might not be a bomb, that's fine, but that doesn't mean that the bastard who was snooping around in here left it as a decoy so that he could plant a _real_ bomb somewhere on this ship. Am I making sense to you?"

Evidentially I was, because Sagan hurried out of the room without another word, leaving me to upend the kitchen all by myself. No stone went unturned as I frantically threw out all sorts of kitchenware out from every crevice onto the floor, big or small, in an effort to see if I had been left more surprises. Pots and pans bounced to the ground to join the silverware, creating an awful sort of racket. Eventually, the kitchen floor became buried from all the clutter that I had hurled onto it, but I felt that I could satisfactorily pronounce this room relatively safe after I had finished examining every nook and cranny… as long as I wasn't counting the Orb, of course, which was still blinking its sinister message at me.

Thankfully the kitchen was the most congested room on the ship, in terms of the number of items I had stowed within it. However, there were still several more rooms to go through on this ship, which I did at the speed of a bull that had been pricked with a red-hot poker. My room, the bathroom, and the guest room were the next areas to be overturned. In minutes, every room looked like a hurricane had swept through it. I kept an eye out for signs of sabotage – in case someone cut into the walls to store an explosive or if they had unscrewed a panel somewhere so that a capsule of poisonous gas could be slipped inside. My searches revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but I could at least rest easy at having knocked these rooms of my ship off the list of places for a potential bomb to hide.

I wondered if I was being a bit too paranoid, if I had finally gone too far. It was a little late to concede if my actions were approaching the kind of subdued madness that would otherwise grip me in my most private moments. Nowhere was safe - if I could not rest easy here, where could I possibly go?

As I was ripping the sheets off my bed so that I could look under the mattress, I was interrupted from a heavy clomping sound that was thudding over my head, through the ceiling. The noises were placed at even intervals, precise timing. That must be Sagan examining the exterior of the ship, I realized. The geth came equipped with magnetic soles so that he could perform zero-g work without incident. I probably would not have thought to check on the outside, I realized. Sagan was nothing if not thorough. If anything had been placed onto the outside of the _Obtruder_ , I knew that Sagan would find it.

An hour later, the two of us were standing back in the still-disastrous kitchen, after I had haphazardly tried to put it all back together, staring warily at the Orb that sat proudly upon the table. We probably could have spent more time searching for signs of trouble, but Sagan and I were confident that we had been comprehensive enough to tackle all the requisite areas that a potential saboteur could have accessed upon this ship within seven minutes. As it stood, we had no additional proof that my yacht had been severely tampered with. Not that we could see.

At least, no other proof except this Orb.

Even with the severe bedlam of the disorganized mess that lay around it, enough to put anyone diagnosed with OCD into a coma, the Orb still looked out of place as its dark polished surface glinted back at us with a knowing wink.

It was like the Orb knew what was coming. It beckoned me, tempting me to touch it, activate it.

 _Play me, tough guy._

I turned to Sagan, a grim look on my face as I pulled my jacket tighter for comfort. "I have no idea what's going to happen if I activate it. You think it's worth just leaving it alone?"

Sagan rotated his optics toward me, the yellow armored flaps on his head twitching ever so slightly as he appraised me.

"It is your decision to make, Samuel."

 _Oh, you are so helpful_ , I wanted to grimace out loud. _Thanks for that_.

"Goddammit," I grumbled as I reached out a hand toward the table. "Like I wanted to live forever anyway…"

Resigned to the fact that I would never be satiated if I walked away and put the Orb out of mind, I flirted one last time with hesitation before I screwed up my courage and lightly rested a finger against the smooth, polished surface of the device. It was warm to the touch, like it had been sitting out in the sun all day.

There was a beep, so soft I almost thought I was imagining it.

Immediately, the outside of the Orb flashed blue once as a sphere of electric light briefly enveloped it. With a tiny mechanical whirr, the Orb then began to hover up from the table and to about chest height over the floor. The perfect sphere suddenly split across the middle and expanded partially as one layer of the Orb unlocked itself to expose the inner workings of the true device hidden inside. Pinpricks of tiny hexagons fluttered aimlessly around it while glowing grid lines began to gradually warp towards the center of the Orb. There was another clicking sound and then a tall burst of jagged, almost crystalline, visible noise streamed from the Orb itself. The illuminated chaos took only seconds to thrash about in its own disorganized sea before it coalesced into a more discernable form.

From the Orb, the figure of a man stepped forth in my kitchen, surrounded by atoms of stray and scattered light.

The hologram rotated on the spot, its featureless face occasionally distorted by streams of static that flitted across the projected visor. The colors of the man's enviro-suit were drowned out by the overwhelming deep aqua color that was the hallmark of every holographic interface. The Orb itself hovered in the middle of the man's form, projecting the bipedal shape entirely _around_ it. The stream was constantly interrupted by electronic interference that buckled the shape every now and then, causing the man to seemingly stutter in place while illuminated iotas danced around his shape.

Recognition flickered in my eyes and I briefly reacted on instinct. My hand shot to the pistol at my hip but I did not draw the weapon forth, as I realized that it was a futile gesture to perform against the hologram. This very image, this faux representation, stirred up feelings of dread and panic, having breached the poorly constructed dams that shored up my pessimism.

That gesture, however, did not go unnoticed by the hologram. " _Not going to work, Sam_ ," the light field spoke, his rasp exacerbated by the sound field emitted from the Orb. He lifted a taunting finger. " _You can try to punish this form all you want, but you'll never be able to hurt me. Not from where you are. Might as well accept it._ "

I did not know whether to hold my ground, scream in frustration, or run away in denial.

Eyzn. Eyzn stood before me, projected in my very ship. If only he were tangible so that I could lock my fingers around his throat and squeeze. But now… with him far away, I could only tremble at the mere sight of him.

"God damn…" I uttered hoarsely.

"The Creator seditionist," Sagan said as he too appraised the hologram. "Kannos. Eyzn."

The figure of the quarian put his fingertips together lightly against one another as his holographic outline fizzled, the colors briefly washing out further. The helmeted head tilted upward and gently rotated in place, appraising the room with a delicateness that I had only seen from the man when he was fully content with the level of control he exerted.

" _Nice quarters at your disposal_ ," Eyzn's voice dripped with malice. " _I can only imagine at how much it cost to cover the upkeep. A rather quiet place for us to chat, eh, Sam?_ "

"Eyzn, you son of a bitch," I seethed as I hunched down a bit, as if I were a cat about to pounce upon its prey. I edged backwards tenderly and took a furtive glance behind me. "Is this what it's come to? You too afraid to face me like a man?"

" _Hardly_ ," Eyzn said. " _If you recall correctly, we've never managed to have a civil conversation between us without it devolving into fisticuffs. When we do get to exchange words, at least one of us has to be restrained in a rather… degrading manner. This way, I'll be able to get my point across_."

Eyzn's avatar then turned in the direction of Sagan and raised an accusing finger. " _Oh, and stop trying to track this signal, you stupid geth. You think I don't notice the silent pings? Clearly Sam's puppet has a mind of its own. You're not going to be able to pinpoint this QED transmission from all the piggyback jammers that I've taken the time to install around this station, so don't waste your time_."

Beside me, Sagan almost sheepishly deactivated his omni-tool after I gave the geth a reluctant nod. Clearly things were not going to be quite so simple with this maniac.

"Sagan isn't a puppet, you ignoramus," I spoke harshly to Eyzn. "Just because you have a brainless drone of your own in your cadre doesn't mean that they all don't have their own personalities and souls."

The crinkling image of Eyzn writhed for a second as the quarian uttered a laugh. " _'Soul?_ '" he mocked. " _You're more deluded than I am, human. You mingle around with people outside your species and now you openly defend the rights of synthetics. Is it really so easy for you to think of the geth as alive? I don't buy it. You appear to act all gracious, yet there exists this chilling inclination that you try to mask so hard. I wonder… what exactly are you trying to keep from me that I already don't know?"_

"Why don't you ask and find out? I can do a little quid pro quo." I then brandished the pistol anyway, waving it about, unconcerned with the killing power I held in my grip. "Trust me, I'm open to dispensing a few pointed arguments your way."

Eyzn scoffed as his image also drew a heavy pistol from his side. " _Is this what you want it to come to, Sam?_ " Eyzn tentatively asked me. " _To go out in a blaze of glory? Do you think that you can find honor in such an act? It's easier to speak of killing than it is to carry it out. Are you sure that you're up for it?_ "

The both of us then raised our weapons in an impotent standoff, neither one of us possessing the capability to dispense pain upon the other.

"If it brings me peace, then I'll accept the consequences."

The quarian sighed as he stowed his pistol first with a rueful shake of his head. " _I don't think you know what you're talking about, Sam. As usual. Not that I think that you'll get a chance to prove it to me._ "

"Famous last words," I growled as I too holstered my gun. "Then why not tell me where you are and we can hash this out once and for all? _Then_ we'll both see if I'm bluffing."

" _As tempting as that might seem, that's nowhere close to being on my itinerary regarding your well-being. I've said it before: I've got other plans for you - you, and what remains of your family._ "

Family? What family did I have left? Unless what he meant was...

Nya. He meant Nya. Just when I had thought I could soon put her on my mind, the wonderful memories painfully came clawing back. I had done nothing to fix things between us, but to even entertain the thought of Eyzn getting his twisted hands on her...

"Listen here, you little shit," I nearly bellowed as I strode right up to Eyzn's hologram, my face within an inch of the smug look of what little light his eyes gave behind his visor. "You so much as touch-,"

" _Temper, Sam_ ," Eyzn softly warned. " _It might be your undoing_."

"You hurt anyone else and I will hunt you down and rip you apart. If you're going to hurt anyone… do it to me. Just me. But no one else!"

" _And what if I don't?_ "

I fell silent at the threat and knowingly began to feel real fear in my life right now. This was a man right here who had proved that he had the power to reach out to me anywhere at will while I was actively trying to avoid him. If he could ruin my life from afar… he could ruin anyone else's.

I must not let his focus be drawn off me, even if would mean my death.

Eyzn spread his arms out wider. " _What if I don't?_ " he repeated. " _What is there to stop me from continuing on after you've been discarded? With an obstacle like you out of my way, why should I stop with you? There are certainly others that deserve what's coming to them. Perhaps I should pay that turian friend of yours a visit - the one that you visited in the hospital this morning. I might even throw in her husband too for good measure. I'm not picky. There's still so much that I can do, Sam!_ " The quarian's arms fell to his sides as his helmet dipped downward. " _How's the wife doing, Sam?_ " he hissed. " _Still facing trouble on the homefront?_ "

My arms quickly shot out as I momentarily forgot myself, only to clench empty air as they harmlessly passed through the glowing veneer that the hologram presented. Eyzn unleashed another evil chuckle, relishing my combined hatred and disappointment as they radiated off me in waves, with me unable to act upon my strong inclinations.

" _All too easy_ ," Eyzn sighed and he reached out a transparent limb, electric fingers running along my cheek gently. I felt static upon my face and I recoiled in disgust. _"Perhaps now you understand why I chose to have our meeting play out this way. Rest assured, Sam, you cannot hurt me without there being the danger that I will hurt those closest to you. I warn you, if you keep up your futile pursuit of me I might just have to start using more creative methods._ "

"I will break you before that happens!" I roared, my voice echoing loudly within the stiff confines of the ship.

" _But, my brother, you are the one who's already broken. You have already undone part of your life when your daughter died at your hands. I'm simply here to sweep up the pieces._ "

The invisible knife at my heart slipped in couple more centimeters, creating more labored breath.

"But _why_ , dammit?!" I pleaded as I gripped the sides of my head, already feeling the rush of insanity begin to press upon my temples. "What the fuck do you want out of me?!"

" _I've already told you what I want_ ," Eyzn casually considered the back of his hand as he put me in the background temporarily. " _This is all being done at my expense… to hurt you. I want to see you suffer - to wrong you as you have wronged me. I will not stop because of your disgusting pleas. I want to see you on your knees in front of me, begging to be put out of your misery after you implore for my forgiveness._ "

As I had wronged him... The pit in my stomach was opening wider and wider with each passing second. The callous, taunting individual in front of me sickened me so much just by looking at him. He used violence as a toy, a tool to dispose of the obstacles in his way. Maybe Eyzn did have a point by choosing to converse in this manner - I don't think that I would be able to control my murderous urge to spring at the man and stave his face in with my bare hands if I saw him in person.

Yet, I somehow found the strength to smile, to spit in the face of evil incarnate and damn the consequences.

"No matter what you do, bitch, I would rather die long before I grovel to _you_."

" _Hmph. No doubt_ ," Eyzn said. " _I'm actually wondering if I could even get close to your limit. It saddens me, actually, because I might have sprung all my plans too late. Losing your daughter has mentally shielded you in the anticipation of more agony. You have already lost that which matters most to you, and I regret that it was not at my hands that this has come to pass_."

"You pathetic fuck," I shook my head in derision.

" _Thereby you prove my point. Maybe I cannot truly take away anything else away short of your life. But… if you can grant me one little request, there might just be a hint of clemency down the line._ "

"Clemency? Go to hell. What could 'clemency' possibly mean for someone like you?"

" _Purely the difference between a quick death… and an agonizing one_."

I considered the consequences and bit my lip in concern. "What exactly are you looking from me?"

Eyzn tilted his head as his form jagged from the continuous bursts of static. " _The same thing I asked you a couple days ago_. _Tell me who killed my mother, Sam. Was it you… or your wife?_ "

Unbelievable, this man. The smirk came almost naturally to me. Such a small and almost insignificant piece of information, and what could it guarantee for me? The truth would stop nothing. Eyzn would still carry out his pursuit of me… but the truth was dangerous for others. I was the one that Eyzn hated the most but if I told him that it was Nya who had killed Kraana… he would turn on her in a heartbeat. She did not deserve to be subjugated to his twisted fantasies. I knew that Nya thought of me as a blackened, disease-filled wretch, but I would not damn her to such a hell.

Even staring at her hatred, I could not do that to her, after what we had done together.

"I did it," I said without hesitation, without obstructions in my throat lodging my words. "You happy now, you sick bastard? _I_ killed your batshit mother and it felt good smashing her visor right into her face! I'm actually happy that her last moments had to be so agonizing because she deserved what she got."

To his credit, Eyzn did not react the way I thought he would. Instead of flying into a rage, the quarian merely deflated a little as he let out a very quiet sigh, his hands clenching and unclenching as his temper momentarily flared. I would have given all my possessions to see the look on the man's unhindered face, but Eyzn quickly recovered after staring off into space for a moment.

" _Then I suppose my retaliation will be just, once I'm finished with you,_ " the quarian said. " _An eye for an eye, is how I believe the saying goes. You humans have so many phrases for every occasion - it's baffling, but wonderful._ "

I did not reply to the awkward segue and instead stared intensely at Eyzn, waiting for him to spout off another threat or to say something else that was inappropriately inane. The quarian shifted his hood a bit, causing another spout of static to erupt around the hologram's edges.

Eyzn seemed to sense my disinterest and quickly cleared his congested throat, after shifting his weight more onto his good foot. " _We've made good progress today, Sam. You've really opened up more than I expected._ "

"Shut up," I spat, hoping that all my spite could make it through intact. "There's nothing you can say that won't make me stop wanting to kill you."

" _What a coincidence! I must say that the feeling is completely mutual_."

"Right," I grimaced as I began to turn to leave. "I'm not going to hold back when I finally do see you again, you know."

" _I look forward to it,_ " Eyzn made a grand gesture of a bow as he started to turn as well, presumably to cut the connection between us.

" _Oh, but maybe you can help shed some light on something for me,_ " Eyzn added as his image turned back around, crinkling in response to his sudden whirl.

I stopped in the middle of the threshold that separated the kitchen and living area, but did not bother to look back at Eyzn. "What?"

" _I'm just curious, is all. It may be different for humans than it is for quarians but… I don't understand how you could have come to the decision to have a kid that wouldn't share your genes. To do so with one of my kind, at least. Legacy is highly regarded amongst my people - an aspect that you don't seem to share. Did you really think that you could love such a thing or were you only doing it, having a child, to placate your wife?_ "

This had been the final straw that finally caused something to snap within me. After being subject to verbal abuse time and again, I had finally had enough. Zombie-like, my face slackened as my breathing became marginally clearer. I straightened my back as I knelt to the side to pick up an aluminum bat that I had left on the ground while overturning each room earlier today. My fingers gripped the rubber end of the bat loosely at first before they tightened with a steel grasp and I finally looked at Eyzn's hologram through glassy eyes.

Hefting the bat over my shoulder, I emitted a quiet breath before speaking, my voice eerily calm and controlled.

"An interesting question. After further consideration I've discovered a reply that I find to be most suitable in this situation."

With a shout of rage, I swung the bat and it impacted perfectly upon Eyzn's Orb. His image disappeared with an electric crackle and the Orb was propelled straight into the nearest wall after emitting a shower of translucent dust. The spherical device's glass layer cracked into pieces as it dropped to the floor, exposing the delicate mechanical innards as it lay among its thick remains.

I finished swinging the bat and let it drop gently from my fingers, relieved at the newfound silence and space in the wake of my foe's banishment. The headache that had been throbbing all throughout the exchange had died down to a smolder… but it still lingered.

"It's all screwed up," I said, partially to myself as I appraised the empty air. "He got to me, the prick. It's never going to end with this guy."

As I ran a hand through my hair, I was starting to see that I had very little in the way of options left. I still lacked the direction I sorely needed to proceed - Eyzn had been adept at muddling the routes to him that would otherwise be obvious. I had gone to others for information and support… only to leave practically empty-handed.

But I hadn't visited everyone I could… yet.

What if I still had one more stop to make, a stop that I would never have considered otherwise? What if my goal now was not to receive information, but to dispense it to those that had the capability to act, to make any shred of a difference?

At this point, what did I have to lose? One tends to act more recklessly when confronted with their own mortality, after all.

Biting back a bile-laced grimace, I hurried over to the closet as I savagely yanked a jacket over my shoulders, making sure that my pistol was snugly back into my holster. Briefly giving myself a once-over, I checked the mirror out of habit and headed over to Sagan, who had been standing in the same spot the entire time.

"Guard the ship," I ordered the geth. "Don't allow anyone in that you don't recognize. I'll be back."

The geth's flaps surrounding his dual optics opened wide in consternation. "Where are you going, Samuel?"

"To make another big mistake, probably," I mustered with a shaky smirk. "Let's just say that I'm not having high hopes for what I'm going to do next. But it needs to be done."

Sagan had no more time to derive understanding from my vague reasoning, for I had shot out the door of the craft and had broken out in a jog as I headed down the jetway to make it to the dock. My pace quickened faster and faster as my heart pounded steadily. At the stairway that led to the ground level, I took the stairs three at a time for I was going so quickly. After passing by the gate to the docks, I bustled over to the skycar stand and slapped the control to call a transport.

God, was I nervous. I would have been reluctant, not to mention crazy, to ever consider doing such a thing right now, but Eyzn had finally managed to convince me that he was mad enough to do anything in an effort to hurt me. Everyone I knew was in danger, and I had not managed to extend that warning to all the people I knew… yet.

Hopefully, after today, that set of criteria would be rectified. It did not stop me from having a really bad feeling, though.

"Going somewhere, big boy?" a smooth female voice intoned from a shadowy corner.

Instantly, my pistol was back in my hand as I stepped forward and dragged the slender form out from the darkness and into the light. I was not gentle, but the person did not seem to mind my roughness as I proceeded to shove her directly into a wall, the barrel of my gun pressed directly against a sand-colored visor.

"Careful…" the quarian gave a greedy hiss. "Hurt me and Eyzn _will_ murder you."

" _Vahl_ ," I spat in recognition but refused to budge. I still recalled the fierce slap this woman had given to me yesterday without warning - despite her now-innocent demeanor, this woman was still dangerous. Anyone who was with Eyzn was not to be underestimated, especially if they were on his little hit squad like Vahl was. "Spying on me, are you?"

The quarian gave a sneering laugh, despite me still pointing a gun at her. She had to be supremely confident in herself to know that I would not pull the trigger at this moment, although considering my current levels of frustration, such an outcome was not all that unlikely right about now. I would have to be irrational beyond a reasonable doubt to blow her brains out right where I stood.

"How very astute of you, human. Eyzn was right in saying that you have a boldness about you. Yet you hesitate, because we both know that if you pull that trigger, you will be signing your death warrant."

Racked with suspicion, I levelled my eyes, not letting up on my grip around her throat. "I assume I have you to thank for the Orb in my ship?"

"Oh, you got it, did you? Must have, since you look so shaken. You need to upgrade your ship's security measures, fool. I snuck on board with nary an alarm impeding me - I could have left so much more than a simple Orb behind, you know."

"The thought had crossed my mind, believe it or not."

"What did you do to the Orb afterward?"

"Smashed it. It was an annoyance."

"It _was_ expensive," Vahl sounded miffed and the position of her eyes confirmed her tone, still adopting an air of indifference, despite the meek stance that I had placed her in. "Eyzn won't be happy at the careless destruction of his property."

I shrugged at that. "Like I care about his feelings. It's about time that I struck one of his nerves."

Vahl had nothing to say at that. She took a quick glance downward at my wrist that led to the hand clenched upon her neck, which was also pressing her up against the wall quite firmly.

"Care to release me?"

I scoffed. "You really think I'm going to fall for that?"

"I'm unarmed. You can see for yourself."

Begrudgingly, I made a few rapid looks upon her limber frame, finding no guns or blades strapped to her person. Vahl's suit was snug enough to ensure that concealment of any weapons was an impossibility, further bolstering her claim. In any case, my arm was starting to get tired, so I backed away ever so slowly after I pried my hand off her neck, but I still kept my gun trained upon the quarian's head.

"I can see that deftness isn't a quality you adhere to," Vahl said as she stretched her limbs before rubbing gingerly at her throat. Her eyes spewed sourness yet there was a sultriness upon her lips.

"If you've got something to say, spit it out," I growled, praying for the nearest skycar to land at my station right at this very moment so that I could rid Vahl from my sight. "I can't stand to listen to your prattle."

"Hmm. You are a very serious individual, Samuel McLeod. I can see why he admires you."

"Who?" I asked dumbly.

"Eyzn," Vahl simpered. "He likes your drive, your spirit. Apparently, from what I heard you made quite a show over on Rannoch - a severely drugged human, you, besting Eyzn in hand-to-hand combat. Where is that demon inside you now, human? I would have loved to see the footage of you rampaging throughout his ship in an effort to find your wife. Would make for a good story - maybe a better vid. It's touching, but… I only see a weakling in front of me. Not the warrior that Eyzn described to me. I have to say that I'm slightly disappointed."

Vahl had to be smiling from ear to ear (not that I could definitely tell) as she, for some reason, began slinking over in my direction.

"You know, if I had been the one you were fighting for all those months ago, I would be willing to overlook your… flaws." The quarian lifted a hand as she slithered it across my forearm, sending shivers spiraling toward my chest and making the hair on my head stand on end. My teeth chattered in response and a low chuckle wormed its way from the quarian's throat. "I might even be able to convince Eyzn of your _perks_ if you could show me what your wife saw in you."

Revolted, I jerked away from Vahl in horror, leaving the quarian's fingertips to lightly scrape along my arm as I got out of reach. The gun in my hand finally dipped downward, but the look on my face was probably more emboldening to Vahl than my half-hearted threat of violence.

"You're nuts, lady," was all I could say.

Vahl gave a high-pitched giggle. "Don't flatter yourself, human. You're not all that attractive. I'm simply wondering what you can offer someone like me. I can't see it, but apparently your wife could, for she somehow wanted you for a permanent mate. Why do think that is?"

"Like I would tell you," I grunted as the nearby whine of an approaching transport signaled that my ride was near. Thank god. I hurriedly backed away from Vahl, never taking my eyes off her in case she were to do something rash.

"Think about it, Sam," Vahl called after me. "My offer still stands."

With one foot into the skycar, I rolled my eyes in Vahl's direction, exasperation tickling my mouth.

"You? _Please_. You're not my type, freak. Besides, you're probably barely a 'five' underneath that helmet of yours. I think I can do better."

I certainly needed that laugh, mostly from Vahl's confused reaction. Fully leaping into the skycar before the quarian could process the insult, I emitted a grateful sigh as the station dropped down under me in moments. Vahl quickly dwindled to a speck and then disappeared as the autopilot shot me away from the station's arm out into the brief embrace of the black void surrounding it. Feeling suddenly cold as I was lit up by stars, I wrapped my arms around my torso as I shivered within my jacket.

I only had the racing lights down below me to draw my attention as I headed into darker waters. The chill within me festered.

* * *

For the longest time, I refrained from moving towards the familiar door. I knew what lay beyond its impassible face - but I would be a fool not to realize that pain was what awaited me if I was to proceed. It was the price that I knew that I was going to have to pay.

Lovecraft would have had a field day with this scenario. At the mountains of madness, indeed.

Screwing up my courage to face what could be a contender for my biggest challenge of the week, I held my breath as I reached out to touch the indicator, emitting a quiet beep throughout the apartment's interior. I strategically held my hand over the tiny aperture next to the door so that the person within would have to open it to know who had come knocking. It wasn't a fair move on my part, yet I felt that I was going to have to pull out all the stops in order for this to work.

I waited for ten seconds… fifteen… thirty. Almost an entire minute passed in the softly lit hallway and I was about to leave in defeat when I heard an almost imperceptible click and the door slid aside, revealing the individual that sent my heart racing purely by sight alone.

The moisture in my mouth vanished. The ache in my temples returned with a vengeance. Lead rooted my legs to the floor as something in my throat locked up tighter than a prison.

Nya stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes darting over my body as if she was considering fleeing my presence outright. Anger, disappointment, and even hints of sadness flashed in her veiled expression as she realized who had come calling.

The second person in her life who had completely failed her. Me.

"What do you want?" Nya asked, her tone gruff. It stung me like the feeling of sandpaper upon skin and I mentally wilted at her impersonal words.

I tilted my head downward in a manner of submission. "Can I…" I made a limp gesture towards the door, "...can I come in?"

I'm sure that Nya would have wanted to slap me in the face rather than let me in, but for some reason, she did not jump to such drastic measures quite so fast. Odd, considering that she had been adamant against even looking upon me back in the elevator bay yesterday.

"You should have called ahead first," Nya chided. "Why should I let you in?"

 _Because my name is on the fucking mortgage for this place, that's why_ , I nearly blurted out in a burst of anger but wisely held my tongue. Maybe Eyzn had a point, my temper was going to get me into trouble very soon.

"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important," I defended, not proud of how deferential I sounded. Trying not to show just how desperate I was, not to mention how much I was hurting just looking at her, I pressed an inch forward. "I just need five minutes. After that, I'm gone. You won't have to see me again."

Whether those words would have any truth to them was all up in the air right now, but it seemed to just make the cut with regards to Nya's overall satisfaction with my answer.

"Five minutes," she then pointed menacingly at me. "And then you leave."

I raised my hands in acceptance and Nya turned into the apartment without final look at me. Haltingly, I followed her inside as the door shut behind me.

 _Now_ I had passed into the lion's den.

The first thing that I noticed was that Nya's - our - apartment looked very much the same from the last time I had seen it. All the furniture was in its same positions, the artwork hung impeccably upon the walls. Hell, even the desks and counters were clutter-free. Hues of orange and green neon light washed in from the ever-present advertisements outside the windows, shuttering in through the blinds as they warmed the place. It all felt so familiar to me that I inexplicably began to feel a burgeoning bubble of relief start to rise in my chest.

Nya had strode into the kitchen at a brisk walk, trying to maintain her distance as far away from me as possible. She finally turned as she entered the pristine area, using the counter as a physical barrier between me and her. She laid her gloved palms flat onto the onyx shelf, knuckled primed as her muscles similarly tensed. Her veiled eyes never left my face, as if she was expecting me to suddenly lash out so that she could strike back immediately with all of her tempered fury and pent-up rage.

However, I endeavored to placate the savage tension that had risen like wildfire within seconds between us. Lingering in the living room, I deliberately proceeded at a crawling pace, taking the time to note that Nya had removed all of the picture frames depicting us as a couple from the credenza near the door. There had been a particular depiction of us staring lovingly at the other (with Nya still clad in her enviro-suit) that I liked very much that was now absent. I should have expected such an outcome, but seeing it in person stung a lot harder than I would have figured.

I began to think that coming here was a huge mistake. My brain ached in alarm and a tooth in the back of my mouth sent an eager spike into the root, overjoyed to be slashing into me with aplomb.

"I came across one of your coworkers the other day," I began as I considered the empty space that had used to contain our shared memories. I lightly placed my hands upon the credenza in longing. "An asari named Tavre. She seemed to be quite friendly with you."

Across the room, Nya glowered. "Why should it matter to you? Am I not allowed to have friends of my own?"

"I'm just stating a fact," I said evenly, doing my damnedest to see if Nya's tone was hiding anything. "This isn't going to be an interrogation into your social life."

"Fine, it's rude of you to pry, anyway. So get to the point, why are you here?"

Tearing away from the empty shelf, I headed over to the far side of the counter, trying my best not to lock eyes with my wife. I lightly tapped my fingers upon the stone ledge, trying to work out my next string of words in case my tongue devolved into unintelligible babble.

"Well... assuming that Rie hasn't informed you already, I'll just say it straight. Eyzn's on the Citadel."

As I had not been looking her when I had spoken, I did not get to witness Nya's immediate reaction. I just stood, uncomfortable in the burgeoning silence as Nya did not follow up with questions at once, which intrinsically surprised me. What could she be thinking right now? She didn't jolt fearfully for her life. She didn't hurry to assess her options regarding her safety. She did not even ask me to elaborate on the matter.

She just said: "So?"

I blinked. _So?_ A hundred different ways this conversation could have spun off and she goes with… " _So?_ "

"S-So?" I repeated, wanting to make sure that I had heard her correctly. "Is that it? Nya, do I really have to recount what this guy did to us on Rannoch? This is the same person who, on multiple occasions, tried to kill us and had previously tortured us. And now he's here… on the Citadel and yet the only thing you have to say when I told you that he's in close proximity is… ' _So?_ '"

In spite of all this, Nya seemed awfully… reserved. She radiated coldness, her attitude barely pleasant. I was pretty taken aback at her lack of concern for Eyzn's straightforward threats. She was acting like I had just read her the weather report for the upcoming week. After all, there was a man on the loose threatening to kill us both and she was hardly reacting in the manner that I had expected!

"Of _course_ I remember," Nya scowled as she dismissively looked out the window. "But I don't see how this pertains to me."

"How it _pertains_ to you? Nya, this is your crazy step-brother we're talking about, here. He's held a grudge on us for as long as we've known him simply because your father wanted to dote on you more than him."

"Then why should _you_ be concerned?" Nya retorted acidly. "You're not his direct family. Why would Eyzn target you?"

"He's never exactly forgiven me for whipping his ass a couple times in a row. I think that he wants to prove that he's better than me. And..." I halted for a second, my throat aching, "...he wants to know who among us was the one who killed his mother. He thinks that I was the one who did it."

Nya finally looked at me, her eyes twin pearls as they searched for an explanation. I could almost see Kraana's death reflected in her visor - a vivid explosion of blood swirling underwater as thick glass crumpled in an instant.

"Why does he think that _you_ did it?"

"Because I _told_ him that I did it, that's why."

My wife's stare turned hard and she gave a quiet snarl. "You stupid… stupid man. You couldn't let me fight my own battles, could you? You just _had_ to be all magnanimous."

Nya slid a hand along the counter, her fingers catching at the slight grooves as a blue harmonic light wave wafted in from the exterior, shimmering along her waist.

Biting down my annoyance, I leaned forward across the stone shelf. "Do you really think that I would let Eyzn hurt you, even after what you said to me all those months ago? Why would you be mad about me trying to _protect_ you?!"

The quarian savagely slammed a fist down onto the counter, eyes viciously clamped shut before she whirled to look at me. "Because it is not your place to decide what happens to me, that's why! You can't dictate me anymore! If Eyzn wants to come after me, fine. I'll be ready to deal with him!"

"This isn't a game, Nya! I've already been subject to being his toy. He's had me followed, forced his way into my ship, and broke my finger on different occasions! Why the hell would I want him and his motley horde to come after you in the same fashion?"

Nya threw her hands up into the air, confused. "What do you mean, ' _motley horde?_ '"

"I mean that he's got himself his own little gang of quarians, cut from same cloth that followed your father, probably. He's also got a close squad of followers, made up of another female quarian, an asari, and a geth prime. I don't know how much more I can emphasize just how serious this is, Nya. I told you, this is the only reason I'm here now, to warn you that he might be coming."

 _The only reason?_ A voice in my head softly sang.

Turning to the side, Nya crossed her arms again and her vocabulator blinked as she spoke lowly, "Maybe you'll soon be able to know exactly how much I've suffered, Sam."

I could hardly believe it. Nya, still my wife, was wishing pain upon me. Did she truly not understand or did she simply not care? Christ… this woman _loved_ me once. Because of a mistake I made, had I really fallen so far in her eyes? I was barely better than dead to her, utterly incapable of bringing her the joy that had once lit up her life. All that was left was the murkiness of agony and empty abandonment.

"You don't mean that," I said as I took a step forward.

"And you don't know me anymore," Nya growled.

"Nya… I… I want to _help_. I only want to make sure that you're safe from Eyzn."

"I _am_ safe from Eyzn," Nya retreated the same distance that I had advanced. "Unlike you, I have more protection from him. I am a C-Sec officer - the kind of person that he cannot touch. The only person that I'm not safe from right now... is _you_."

The fabric of my shirt felt rougher upon my skin. The temperature of the room suddenly took a dip yet I did nothing to mitigate my discomfort as, once more, hateful stabs resonated in my heart, sending a litany of aches and pains to be distributed throughout my body.

It was no use. She was lost to me.

A thousand hateful words for me to violently spew in her direction materialized and died upon my tongue. I felt all alone in the living room, standing upright with nothing to support me. I was in danger of collapsing right where I stood, realizing that Nya truly did not feel anything for me anymore. I really had killed all the love she had held for me because of what I had done. The self-inflicted wound I had made upon the both of us could never be healed, I knew. Maybe I was playing a fruitless game with the fantasy that somehow, things could return to the way they once were.

How utterly naive I was to believe such drivel.

"Is that all you had to say to me?" Nya sneered from across the way, not a trace of tenderness to discern.

 _No_ , I thought miserably but did not speak. _I fucked up, Nya. I killed our daughter. I brought all this upon us. I should have never married you in the first place if this was how things were always going to turn out. I probably should have killed myself a long time back, way before you ever met me._

Of course, I never said any of those things, even though it felt good for me to imagine doing so. I felt tired, exhausted. Clamminess beginning to encroach, I sagged against the counter, desperately trying to break from the expectant gaze Nya was laying into me.

A light ringing sound then emanated inside the room, over from where Nya stood. The quarian raised her arm and spotted a little blinking indicator going off rapidly upon the back of her hand - Nya was receiving an incoming call over her omni-tool. She looked up at me and then back to her tool before obviously deciding that whoever was calling her was worth more of her time than me, unsurprising as it was.

"Stay there," she gruffly ordered before she activated her tool, her arm angled in a way so that I couldn't see the speaker. "Hey, I'm so glad you called," Nya spoke in a lighter voice than she had used with me while she headed off into the bedroom. Our bedroom. She shut the door to give herself some privacy as she continued to talk. " _I'm actually in the middle of…_ "

Adding to the impersonal atmosphere that had permeated my soul the entire time I had lingered in this damn apartment, I was suddenly left alone to simmer in my solitude. Hanging my head, I unleashed a sigh that I had been holding for a while as I trudged away from the counter, breathing hard as I fought not to explode into a whirlwind of rage, after witnessing just how little my wife cared about me.

Couldn't she understand that I was trying to save her? I told her - directly to her face so that there would be no confusion - that Eyzn was back and had us lined up for his impending murder spree. But Nya was unperturbed for some reason. Why? She had given some inane reason that being a C-Sec officer would somehow prevent Eyzn from going after her, like her occupation provided a cushion of safety. Did she not realize that I knew that she was facing disciplinary action at work? She was a hair's breadth away from getting fired so why was she acting like she was going to come out of this all right? C-Sec could not protect her, not for much longer. It made no sense.

Eyzn wanted to kill me… he wanted to kill her. Was it really so hard for Nya to see that, even after all we've been through, I did not wish to see her hurt?

 _Ah_ , the little voice said, _but you were the one who had the ability to hurt Nya the most. Eyzn's punishment seems of little consequence in comparison, doesn't it?_

Sometimes my voice of reason could maddeningly provide some insight once in a while, to my chagrin.

"I just… don't know how to reach her!" I grunted to myself as I furiously pounded my fists against the wall. The fierce impact nearly caused tears to pour forth, but I steeled myself, letting my wet gasps abate slightly as I tried my best to calm myself down, hoping that my stifled sobs would not rupture the tenderized flesh of my throat.

I unclenched my hands, finding my palms smeared with blood. My fingernails had torn into the skin while I had balled my fists. Sheepishly, I walked over to the sink to wash the blood off. After I had dried my hands, I shoved them into the pockets of my jacket, confusion momentarily flitting across my face as my right hand felt a piece of paper occupying part of the available space.

With a dread recollection encroaching, I withdrew the paper and unfolded it, recognizing the word upon it as well as the hasty script in which the word had been written not a few hours ago.

 _Duloxetine-D_

Rie's prescription for Nya.

" _Maybe you should try and learn all of the facts before you open your mouth_ ," I recalled the turian growling to me as she shoved the scrap of paper in my direction, obviously with the intent for me to fill in the blanks myself.

"This is crazy," I muttered as I folded the paper back up into one of my jacket's inside pockets. Yet at the same time, a tiny inclination of foreboding began to nudge me forward, wanting to dispel the shadows and myopia of the unknown around me.

To the first drawer in the kitchen that I came across, I opened it and shuffled around a year's worth of bills, as well as a few odds and ends that were tumbling about inside.

Nothing.

In the next drawer were simply eating utensils and nothing else that was out of the ordinary. Gravity pressing upon me with greater force, I closed the drawer and moved on.

Cooking materials, measuring cups, plastic bags. Each and every drawer that I quickly rummaged through had nothing of direct importance to me - nothing there was confirming the dread suspicions and evidence that had been previously brought to my attention.

But then I reached the last drawer.

A lone object rattled inside as I slid the holder firmly along its rails. A clear orange cylinder. Light colored tablets rattling around the container. Medical label upon the face - Nya's name as the requester. Heart in my throat, I reached down and procured it, already knowing what the label would read yet praying that my expectations would be proven false just this one time in my life.

Wrong again.

"' _Duloxetine-D_ ,'" I mouthed as I read the bold face across the label, my eyelids seemingly weighing several hundred pounds each. "' _Do not exceed maintenance dosage of greater than 60 mg per day. Duration: take until symptoms recede until further notice_.'"

As if I needed further confirmation, the pill canister was already more than half empty. No question that the medicine that lay inside was being utilized frequently.

It was hard not to feel guilty about the implications of such a discovery, I mused while I set the bottle of duloxetine-D back into the drawer, shutting it and sealing it away for now. I may have initially thought that Rie was bullshitting me when she had presented this knowledge to me, but to see for myself was something completely different. After all, for an idea to take hold, tangible proof will always be the catalyst for a person's mental tipping point.

Here was that irreconcilable proof that Nya was actively taking depression medication. Just the sight alone of the container had been enough to make me feel like I had been thrown into a brick wall. Depressed. My Nya. God damn it. She couldn't stop herself from hurting. All this time, she still felt the lifeblood flowing from the invisible wound that refused to let itself clot. Whereas I had managed to tie a flimsy tourniquet to my own agony, Nya continued to bleed. No matter what I had done in my pathetic attempts to save her, she was still continuing to die in front of my eyes, stung from the loss of a daughter that could still be alive today were it not for my ignorance.

I was the cause of this, this death of a thousand knives.

Depression. It poisoned my wife. Consumed her mind. Driving her mad as remnants of past joy consistently tormented her with their existence. She would not accept my hands to stem her bleeding, the very same that had cut her.

How could I possibly indicate to Nya that, deep inside me, I was devastated at having done this to her?

Reeling, I wandered back into the living room and into the next room that had its door ajar. This used to be our rec room, where I had placed a small cache of exercise equipment for me to use on occasion, to dispel the atrophy brought on from micro-gravity. The room itself was dark, unlit from the overhead lights. I stood midway in the threshold, almost dreading what I was going to see when I flipped on the switch, but I could not resist once my curiosity had been piqued.

I was both dismayed yet relieved to discover that everything in the room was exactly the same as when I had seen it last.

Nya and I had redone the exercise room completely in the past year or so. The place was the color of a thick cream and all the exercise equipment had been removed in the interim. In its place, a crib stood proudly, yet empty, in the middle of the room, flanked by a tall mirror and a set of dressers. The floor, unlike the rest of the apartment which was a blue-gray tile, was covered in a soft carpet, one that depressed nicely when trod upon.

But, heartbreakingly, off in the corner there was a folded translucent covering whose surface was covered by a few metallic ports and covers, a kind of tarp that could be easily expanded in moments, made to a fierce rigidity that could rival glass.

Our daughter's environmental bubble.

It had been her shield, designed to protect her from the dangerous and disease-infested galaxy, a galaxy that I unfortunately could experience in all its splendor alone. A galaxy that would have forced her to be cut her off from exploring it in its entirety, doomed to a life of sterility. She would have had to live like her mother, sealed away in an enviro-suit, only able to remove it in certain occasions, never able to walk upon the surface of a planet unmasked. Quarians faced a cruel and unfair life right at the outset… but my daughter had been dealt the unfairest blow of all.

I still remembered the days that had occurred before I even knew what was to come. Before I knew of my daughter's existence. There had been moments back then where nothing but happiness seemed to be lurking around each corner. Yet, ironically, these were the moments that seemed to be lifetimes away in my mind.

Alas, it was a span of mere months.

 _The days that these months contained had their own particular rhythm to be followed. There was this one day, out of all days, that was just like any other, yet little did I know of its utmost importance to me._

 _After working on my usual regimen of thirty minutes on the treadmill, followed by a few sets with the free weights, there had been little for me to differentiate this morning from the others. I grabbed a towel from a nearby rack after I had finished and I mopped away the sweat upon my brow while I fanned my tank top simultaneously. Breathing hard, I slowly sat down upon a nearby padded bench, taking a moment to catch myself as I prepared for my shower before I headed off to the hospital. I checked my chronometer on my omni-tool for good measure - I was right on schedule._

 _But before leave to go to the bathroom, the door to the rec room had opened and Nya walked in, all the details upon her enviro-suit set perfectly in place, as always. Rather unusually, she seemed to have this kind of glow about her, exemplified by the upward orientation of her eyes through her visor - a smile. Her fingers were lightly hooked together and she had a slight sashay to her walk._

 _Maybe I was still tired from just waking up but it actually seemed that Nya was rather ecstatic about something. Curious as to this behavior from her, even though I instinctively found pleasure in it, I stood as I anticipated some sort of explanation._

" _You're up rather early," I started as I checked my chronometer again for confirmation, just to make sure I had not read it wrong the first time. Indeed, Nya would usually not wake for at least another hour._

" _Couldn't sleep," she said breezily. "Wanted to see how you were doing."_

 _Okay, so something was amiss. Nya usually never interrupted my workouts out of courtesy. I chuckled as I began absentmindedly wrapping the towel around my hand._

" _All right," I said innocently. "What's going on?"_

" _What do you mean?" Nya pretended to be clueless. "Why would you think that something's going on?"_

" _Come on, Nya," I smiled as I took a closer step to her and rested my body against the wall with an arch of an eyebrow. "You can't tell me that this isn't obvious. Something's different."_

" _Is that such a bad thing?" she said in a seductive whisper as she took a step. "A little difference in your life?"_

" _Never. But it does have me curious."_

" _Ah, you humans with your implacable curiosity. What is so wrong about this, me walking in on my husband exercising?"_

" _You joke, but it's the way that you walked in that has me all suspicious."_

 _Nya jerked back comically as if she was offended. "Suspicious? Of me? Sam, that hurts my feelings."_

 _My grin became wider as I took another step. "Now that I don't believe." I was then close enough to Nya for me to wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her towards me in a gentle hug. Just her presence was enough to intoxicate me, to crave such lush contact. "Come here," I murmured for good measure._

 _My wife made a cute little sound as she found herself pressed against my wider frame. There was a distinct heat to her body, one that the enviro-suit could not fully nullify, but tangible nonetheless. She placed her hands upon my hips as she looked up lovingly at me, her eyes lidded in bliss._

 _I lifted my hands and gently placed them around the back of her neck, within her hood, as my thumbs began to softly rub at the brushed metal sides of her mask. "Tell me what's on your mind," I whispered, a sensual, loving order._

 _Nya's hands on my hips pulled me in closer, her lungs hitching as she struggled to contain her excitement._

" _Sam…"_

" _Yes?"_

" _I'm pregnant."_

 _If I had been sitting down, I would have fallen over in surprise. As it was, I merely froze in place, completely dumbstruck from the two words that I had just heard. I even shook my head, replaying the moment over and over again to make sure that there was no misunderstanding. My jaw dropped but a wide smile quickly formed as a burgeoning heat seemed to blaze all throughout me like a phoenix heralding joy._

" _Oh… wow," I tried to say, but there was no breath for me to expel. "Wow, Nya. You… you're sure?"_

" _I'm absolutely sure!" Nya said as she giddily bounced on her toes before she turned slightly solemn. "I double-checked everything - my cycle is late, I had two positive readings. I… I really am pregnant, Sam. Are you… you're happy with this, right?"_

" _Happy?" I breathed as I threw my arms around Nya's shoulders, hugging her close to my chest as I brought my head next to hers. An embrace of joy, confirmation that I held everything dear in my arms, in such close proximity. "Nya, what kind of husband would I be if I was not at my happiest at this moment? I am… overjoyed. For you. For us." I turned my head slightly so that I could kiss the side of her helmet, upon which her hood feathered. "For our child."_

 _Gratefully and ecstatically, Nya returned the hug, no doubt accompanied by what had to be the biggest smile of her life under that visor. There was a soaring feeling that seemed to lift me up by my shoulders as I held my wife. We were finally going to have a child together. This… all of this had led to this moment. The trials. The tribulations. I could finally put them all behind me._

 _I was going to be a father._

" _I love you so much," I said thickly, mustering back a torrent of emotion. I may have seemed stoic at this point but I was two steps away from completely breaking down out of happiness right now. Nya and I separated from our hug and I tenderly placed my hands atop Nya's belly, imagining the life that was just beginning to burgeon in her womb past the thick, enveloping suit. "We're going to have a baby," I said in awe. "You… you're going to be a mother."_

" _At long last," Nya sighed. "I get to share this with you."_

 _Overwhelmed, I dropped to my knees, breathing brought to a rasp, as I carefully pressed the side of my head against Nya's belly, my arms wrapped high above her waist. Nya's fingers gingerly grazed my face, softly sliding across the skin of my cheek, playing with my hair, as she held my head at her abdomen. I could not wait to feel the tiny urges and kicks from my child, to watch them grow as the days went on, to be there to greet them when they were introduced to this wonderful galaxy of ours._

 _I had never wanted to be a dad so badly until now._

" _We're going to have a baby," I murmured again in delight._

"Get out!" I heard an angry voice cry out.

I was not even aware that I had closed my eyes, to my surprise. I guess I must have spaced out for a second - about ten minutes had gone by with me sitting here upon this bench in the room that my daughter would have been in right now. Heavily, I turned around to behold Nya shaking in the doorway, a finger trembling as it gestured in my direction.

"How dare you set foot into here?!" Nya accused. "Leave! Get out of here, right now!"

Were I a better man, I would have complied with Nya's request without argument, subject to her whim with a meek and non-confrontational state of mind. However, something cold had lodged itself within me since the day hatred had been allowed to fester, and as much as I wanted it out of me, I refused to yank it from my body.

Creating a withering stare of my own, I planted my feet firmly upon the ground.

"I don't think so," was my response.

"You… spiteful human," Nya seethed, emphasizing the word _human_ like it was an insult, perhaps the first time she had ever made such an indication to me. "How can you stand in the same room where your own daughter died? Are you trying to hurt me even more? Can you at least _answer_ me?!"

Shaking her head as Nya decided that I was not going to speak, she frantically gestured towards the exit.

"You had your five minutes. You told me about Eyzn. You said everything you wanted to say, right? So just leave me alone and get the hell out of here!"

Again, the urge to comply nearly jerked me off my feet. The ambivalent monster within me yanked that urge straight back down as I adopted a dark look.

I folded up my hands, my knuckles turning white from the effort. "I don't have to let you dictate how I should come and go… _in my own apartment_ ," I growled as I stood and walked over to the side of the crib, letting my hands run along the railing.

"Don't do this, Sam," Nya warned, on the verge of panic. (Was she fearful? Of _me?_ ) "You can't just barge into my life like this. _I live here!_ "

"No… I _let_ you live here!" I suddenly roared back, finally making Nya shrink in fear, devastating me from how I was treating her, yet I refused to let up. "You're conveniently forgetting that _I'm_ the one paying your rent so that you can continue to stay in this place which, need I remind you, is twice is big as where _I_ have to sleep every night! I don't badger you to hold up your end financially because I know that you cannot afford it!"

"And you're so gracious to remind me of the fact that I cannot support myself!" Nya screamed back, nearly in tears. "While I have to shell out a fortune every week just to eat sterilized crap, you at least get to go back to your ship without a care in the world from your cushy, high-paying job!"

"You think I don't give a shit? I have _plenty_ of things to care about, Nya!" I bellowed as I stomped my foot down in frustration.

"That's funny, because I don't know what those things are anymore! I certainly doubt that I'm among them."

She didn't see. She just couldn't understand. All Nya had to do was allow for the tiniest shred of humility to peek through, but it looked like that such a thing would never happen. Becoming more and more disoriented by the second, I leaned over the crib, my hands furiously clenching the railing to prevent me from lashing out in spite.

"I wonder, did you even care about me as much as you said you did?" Nya taunted, her voice adopting a very enraging tone to my ears.

I clenched my eyes shut, trying to drown her noise out. "Shut up, Nya."

"Did you even care about our daughter?"

"Be quiet!" I begged.

"Maybe you didn't," the quarian breathed, her hands trembling as she continued on in her wild speculation. "Maybe you never wanted her in the first place. Was that it? Were you lying to me the entire time?"

"Nya… I'm serious," I raised my head, my eyes growing larger as tears started to bead in the corners. I felt like I was about to vomit at hearing these hurtful words come from the person I married. " _Shut. Up._ "

"Or maybe…" Nya cried, "you killed her on purpose. You killed her… because she was never going to carry your genes. You deliberately killed her because _she wasn't completely yours!_ "

Automatically, my hands grasped as tightly as they could and my body whirled in one quick, fluid motion. The crib that I held was easily lifted off the floor, in a gigantic arc, before I let go to send it sailing through the room and into the nearby wall.

There was an enormous crash.

The crib disintegrated into an explosion of wooden and metallic pieces as it fully impacted upon the wall. Timber strips snapped and splintered. Aluminum supports rattled and bent. The cloth blanket that had still been inside was pummeled from the debris and gently floated down amongst the still toppling wreckage. The remains of the crib fell to the ground in a disassembled heap, a shiny post rolling from the pile to gently nudge my foot as a final reminder of the life that I had destroyed along with it.

And then the thought inanely came to mind.

 _She writhed atop me, throwing her head back as the cry was uttered loudly into the air. I felt her torso press deeper into me as she took me further into her body. She quivered, grunted, and jerked helplessly as her muscles overcame her inhibitions. Her body was well-defined - a thin line ran from her navel, up her belly, and between her breasts._

 _Sweat soaked us both and I hung onto her hips for dear life as I too felt something stir within me. I mustered out a warning and Nya squirmed in joy as she tried to draw it from me faster. We moved as one in a joyous union, overcome by the pleasure we imparted upon the other._

 _We soon uttered a simultaneous moan as we felt our bodies lock. Nya leaned back, straddling me, her short and unkempt hair ruffled in the humid air, her eyes delicately closed as she savored the sensation, her mouth agape as she lost all motor control, a thin string of drool trickling from her mouth and down her chin as she croaked out a wet-_

"NO!" Nya screamed at the very instant the crib smashed into bits, shaking me from the vivid fantasy. She crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, the destruction clearly reflected in her visor and began to uncontrollably sob, her hands desperately sliding across the floor in the direction of the now-disassembled crib, as if she felt she could put it all back together again, a fruitless effort.

Horrified at myself, I backed away from the mess as well as the crying quarian, suddenly feeling all alone in the room.

" _Temper, Sam_ ," Eyzn's voice greedily floated into my head. " _It might be your undoing._ "

"This…" I tried to say, but I could not figure out what I could possibly do to make this all better. Rendered pathetic, I kept stammering as I shuffled over to the door with panic flooding my mind, urging me to flee right now. "This wasn't… I didn't mean…"

 _God. Dear god. Why did I do that? What the hell is wrong with me?_

Trying to conceal my own tears, I hurried past Nya, who was still bawling on the floor, her head resting upon the ground as the crushed crib lay in a sad pile inches away. I covered my mouth as the blood pounded in my ears, almost drowning out the words that I heard Nya muster out, in what was perhaps the most devastated moment that I had ever heard her. Pain, anger, and the most violent of hatred were all reflected in the next two words that she sent searing in my direction.

" _F-Fuck_ you," she whimpered.

I stopped walking, almost disbelieving that I had heard her say that. But there could be no confusion, and it shook me to the core. Heavily, I placed a hand upon the side of the doorway to steady myself, now noting that I was painfully short of breath.

Refusing to turn and look at her, I gave a tiny, unseen nod.

"Yeah," I conceded through my dry throat. "I know I deserve that."

I could have backtracked and apologized to her. I could have helped repair what I had broken. I could have tried to comfort her in her anguish, no matter if she wanted it or not, but such a gesture would have partially healed the open wound that was now flowing within my heart.

I did neither of those things.

Unable to bear the thought of watching her suffer some more, I left her sobbing on the floor as I departed the apartment for good.

* * *

 **A/N: The next chapter might be delayed due to the upcoming holiday week (for those non-American readers, that would be Thanksgiving that I'm referring to), so you can put down those pitchforks in the meantime in case I take an inordinate amount of time to continue this story.**

 **And it would be such a shame if I were to end the story here... wouldn't it? Good thing that we've still got a whole lot more to get through, so don't wish an agonizing death for me just yet!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Eyzn's Hologram: "Stahl Arms" by Lorn from the video game _Killzone: Shadowfall_**

 **Crib Smash: "From Nothing Comes A King" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**


	9. Idyll III: The Enemy

_Four months from_ _NORMAL TIMELINE_ _  
Status:_ _CONTINUUM RESUMED_

Da'var had known a litany of painful sensations throughout his life, far exceeding those suffered by the average human, let alone the average alien in this galaxy. He had felt the sting of bullets, the slashes of knives, the stabs of needles, but all of them dispensed an inherently familiar feeling of agony that he could almost anticipate at this point in his life. His nerves had almost been dulled away from this sort of abuse; each cut that welled blood produced an ebbing stream of pain that vanished as quickly as dew in the wake of the morning sun.

But there still remained conscious perceptions that were clear and sharp to the man, not yet having been taken for granted.

The foreignness of his predicament right now was one such perception. If Da'var was able to look up right now he would be able to see the duo of gray, cylindrical drones hovering just overhead as they projected a violet, wavy, but transparent bubble that completely surrounded his body. However, the bubble that encased him was the manifested state of a stasis-inducing barrier. Main muscle groups were completely immobilized so long as a body was trapped within the field, meaning that Da'var could not turn his head, twitch his feet, or bend his back. He could, though, move his eyeballs and open his jaw a crack, allowing him to speak at the very least.

But whatever minute movements Da'var was able to accomplish while he was within the barrier took a great deal of strength to carry out. It felt like he had been dipped in a sea of static, very much like the kind of static that fizzled off those old cathode ray tube televisions he had sat in front of when he was a boy back on Earth. It washed over him, causing every hair on his body to stand on end uncomfortably, prickling with an invisible charge. His eyes hurt and his jaw ached as tiny unstable molecules bound him in place, pushing against the direction he naturally exerted force.

The stasis barrier imparted even more odd effects upon Da'var's person. Because gravity was negligent in these fields, Da'var was easily suspended a foot above the ground. His knees had been forcibly bent at a ninety degree angle and his arms had been bent in the same manner, only having been wrenched behind his back with his fists clenched. The human's body had then been rotated the tiniest bit forward, so that Da'var's natural line of sight was directed towards the floor a yard or two in front of him.

Next to the human, also trapped in a sphere of the same azure light, hung Ahrun, his eyes wide behind his dark visor. The quarian was finding it difficult to breathe in the inhibiting field and he was on the verge of hyperventilating until he passed out, almost completely being gripped with panic. Under his enviro-suit, his skin twitched in anticipation of the pain that Da'var had previously hinted at, and he gave a tiny whimper at the mere thought of his blood being spilled - never before had Ahrun ever been in such a personally dangerous situation before.

Ahrun found it hard to believe that Da'var could look so _calm_. Indeed, the human had closed his eyes and was breathing in and out pensively, a swimmer's rhythm. Da'var's nostrils flared with each breath, dragging in stale air that his lungs constantly refreshed. Through the barrier, the jagged white scar upon the side of the human's neck became more noticeable.

If only Ahrun had the ability to peer into Da'var's mind, he would be able to see instantly that the man was as far away from calm as it was possible to imagine. Deep down, the human was deathly afraid. He too, was gripped in the throes of horror, dreading the physical and psychological daggers that were soon to be sent in his direction. The fear seared him, blackening whatever hope lay glimmering within the man while leaving the exterior of his bodily vessel untouched.

Fear can manifest itself in different ways. Da'var likened the emotion to a series of layers, very much like the layers in Dante's _Inferno_. The further one falls from each stage to the next indicates the level of corruption that the fear has managed to cause. Contrary to popular belief, Da'var felt that the first layer of fear is the deadliest layer - the first inclinations of the emotions, the grasping fingers. The mind is confused once fear begins to press upon its borders. At the surface level, the body makes knee-jerk reactions once the fear is introduced. This allows panic to control their body and fog their mind. Common sense is clouded. It is a short-lived stage, but how people choose to proceed in that stage is a litmus test for how people deal with their own demons.

Da'var knew this fear very well. The surface fear still tried to consume him from time to time. He could recall moments where he had let himself submit to the inclinations, to react without thinking in the wake of the panic. It would never stop trying to corrupt him, no matter how long he had willed it away.

As devastating as fear can be, it gets less obvious the deeper into the layers that one delves. The further one descends, the greater the roots of the fear tend to grip and spread. The fear is now ever-present, more difficult to remove, yet it can be acclimated to more quickly than the initial panicking fear in the beginning. One can learn to leave with the fear inside them, learn to tame it and control it, and to recognize the signs when it begins to take hold so that they can stop the rot from spreading, to basically control the demon that lives inside them by cutting off its precious supply of food: chaos. Fear breeds more fear, and Da'var was riddled with it, but he had managed to discover where his deep-rooted fear derived from and how he could cope with it, giving him the strength to endure and withstand the punishment that was about to be brought down upon him.

For now, at least.

With a withering intake of breath, Da'var finally opened his eyes.

The room he and Ahrun were in was not unfamiliar to him. He had been inside this place several times, in fact, but an aura of negativity blossomed within the walls of the room, radiating and infecting the two men who were trapped within. Like the main room the two had spent most of their time, where most of the quarian "guests" had been congregated, this space was perfectly proportioned like a cube and the walls were still blindingly white, but the floor here was smooth and polished concrete instead of light-colored tile. The ceiling was lower to about a story in height and an array of six square lights positioned directly overhead looked like they had been chiseled out through the room as a series of skylights.

Together, Da'var and Ahrun stared at the singular door in front of him, seemingly the only exit. Da'var tried to count the seconds in his head to when the seemingly impassible face would open to reveal their tormenter. He lost count at second 567.

Ahrun felt the triple beat of his heart slam heavier and heavier against his ribcage. Trying to suck down breath through a tightened windpipe, he almost let out a sob from all the heavy anticipation weighing down upon him.

"What..." Ahrun gulped, his mouth feeling unbearably parched, "...what happens now, Da'var?"

Da'var grunted, his nose faintly wrinkling. He seemed to simmer within the undulating field of the stasis bubble. "You mean, what happens when that door opens?"

"Y-... y-yes."

If Da'var could have shrugged, he certainly would have. "You're going to meet the man in charge, that's what."

"What will he do to me?"

"Depends," Da'var said. "He'll probably start you on a few electric shocks. He's not going to leave a mark on you… just yet. He'll have something even worse in mind for me, speaking from experience."

"I've..." the meek quarian quaked. "I've never been shocked before. What… what does it feel like? How bad will it hurt?"

"Oh, it's _going_ to hurt quite a bit," Da'var instantly replied. He knew that there was no point in sugarcoating things - that would just make everything worse for Ahrun. "But unless you have a heart condition, you're going to live. It only hurts for as long as the current is being run. It kind of feels like every square inch of your body is on fire. You can't breathe, you can't think, you can only hope to hold out. You'll live today. Yes… as brutal as our host is, he's not careless. He doesn't dispose of people whenever the mood strikes him."

Ahrun mentally wilted, his mood dropping even further. "I don't know if I can hold out. This… I… I just want to go home."

Da'var gave a thoughtful rumble. " _Home_ , eh? Well, that's a goal for you to focus on, then. Unless, you're the kind of person that would do anything to make your agony cease just to entertain a vain idea of escaping your destiny. So, Ahrun, what kind of a man are you? Do you want to lie down and give up, just to make the pain end? Or… do you want to remain your own person?"

"I want…" the quarian struggled, knowing the difficulty of the choices ahead, "I want my will to be mine."

"Then think of home. Keep it in your mind. Draw strength from it."

Ahrun blinked as he attempted to get a better look at Da'var's anger-laced expression. "So what do you think of, if not your own home?"

"Another emotion," Da'var growled after some hesitation. "I think on my own anger. I have plenty of things to be angry about… and all the motivation in the world to direct it outward on the one person that deserves it."

The rage that brimmed within this human! Ahrun knew that Da'var had been keeping it all locked back ever since he had met him. The human could break a quarian in two with his focused strength - Ahrun would hate to be the one subject to all of Da'var's pent up emotions and the quarian somehow felt a warmth bloom within him - a tiny little flicker - but one that was eager to rise in the wake of the human's confidence.

As relieving as the flame was for Ahrun, it quickly flickered and died at the moment a heavy clanking noise reverberated through his bones as the door in front of them opened up to reveal the thick shadowy expanse beyond. Not even the glaring lights slamming upon the two from above could penetrate out from the room. Ahrun could not tear his gaze away from the opening while Da'var remained steadfast.

Then there was a footstep.

Then another step.

And another.

Stepping to the side in the doorway, a thin, slender quarian appeared in a dark and partially armored enviro-suit. Their visor and parts of their rather baggy hood, unusual for a quarian male, were marked with a vivid color of blue - corona hot. They walked with a slight limp - the tip of their boot occasionally scraped against the concrete floor from his odd gait. His arms were folded behind his back as if he was not pained from his affliction but merely found it to be an annoyance. A simple impediment, nothing more.

Behind the quarian clomped a towering figure of a geth prime, a trio of blazing red optics bearing down upon the two prisoners. It was a couple heads taller than the quarian that it was escorting, its lifeless gaze stoic and impassive - the uncaring stare of an unfeeling machine. The synthetic's footfalls were heavy, yet the rest of its seemingly lumbering body moved silently, almost cat-like. Aside from a few mechanical creaks and whirrs emanating from its chassis, the prime made nary a sound as it walked behind its master.

Approaching the two suspended by the drones, the limping quarian clapped his hands once together in anticipation, body faintly shaking with glee.

"And furthermore… Carthage must be destroyed," a rough rasp escaped from his vocabulator.

It was a deeper voice than Ahrun had been expecting. Rougher too, almost like this quarian had sustained damage to his vocal cords at one point in time. Ahrun also had no idea as to what this man's words were referring to, as it seemed to be an inside reference that he shared with Da'var.

Ahrun glanced at Da'var for context but the human's expression changed little. Perhaps explanations could come later. The blue-accented quarian now walked up to the suspended prisoners and appraised them with what could only be described as a tantalizing sort of amusement before he craned his head up to the drones that held them and spoke clearly.

"Barrier decrease. Minimum depth."

At once, the purplish bubbles that had been surrounding Ahrun and Da'var shrunk down, no longer taking the shape of spheres. Instead, the barriers molded themselves to less than a millimeter in depth around the shape of their bodies, forming themselves accordingly while the captives still remained suspended in the same pose.

"Much better," the quarian simpered as he now walked up to the bound human, looking up at him while Da'var's own expression grew darker with disgust. "So, we find ourselves back here again, eh? How things have changed since we spoke last. I was almost beginning to miss you."

Da'var said nothing but gave a primal grunt instead. He did not look away from the taunting quarian, wanting to make sure that he held the alien in nothing less than all the contempt and loathing that he had to offer.

If anything, the limping quarian seemed unperturbed. "What do they call you in this place again? ' _Ahto Da'var_ ,' is it? You embrace the irony when it should drive you into a rage. Very peculiar. Do you think your name gives you _strength_ , after what you did? Does this one," he then gestured to Ahrun, "even know your real name? The name you were born with? I guess it doesn't matter. I won't spoil the surprise for him, after all it's _your_ prerogative."

"Courteous as ever," Da'var finally rasped through clenched teeth, causing his captor to perform a tiny double-take in surprise. "Though I'd prefer you to be a little more consistent with your sick games… Eyzn."

 _Eyzn_ , Ahrun committed the name to memory. _Eyzn_. So his captor had a name.

A static wave washed over Eyzn's curved visor, briefly obscuring his eyes as the quarian gave a low chuckle.

"If it's consistency you want, then I can certainly oblige. How long have we been at this, _'Da'var_?' Four months? Five?"

"You tell me," Da'var lowered his eyes. "I can't keep track of time accurately in this place."

"Ah, well it's certainly around that time period, thereabouts. Let's just say four months going that we've been doing this, together. Long time for anyone, don't you think?"

"Maybe for you. I can be a patient man when it suits me."

Eyzn tilted his head, partly in disbelief at the thin shield of bravado that the human had thrown around himself.

" _Sure_ you can," Eyzn said with a tiny twinge of sarcasm. "But your wife… perhaps she is not as patient as you."

Ahrun saw the light in Da'var's eyes harden, as well as a muscle in his jaw start to twinge. Ever so subtly, the muscles in the human's arms tensed and each withering breath felt for him like someone was taking a rake to the inside of his throat.

"Four months is a long time," Eyzn continued smugly. "A long time to be without contact for anyone. Even an estranged husband. Not like the two of you left each other on good terms but… I wonder if you ever did still hold out any hope for her. In any case, 'Da'var,' I regret to tell you this," the quarian, however, did not sound particularly regretful, "but I don't think that she's taken your absence as badly as you might think."

The human's arms quaked as Ahrun recognized that he was trying to struggle out of the corporeal bonds, nearly snapping his wrists clean off.

"Have… you… been… watching… her?" he uttered in a strangled gasp.

Eyzn gave a singular nod. "From afar," he assured. "My methods of observance are not as intrusive as you might fear. Do not worry my friend, my _brother_. I have not so much as _approached_ her in your absence. Not a hair on her pretty helmeted head has been touched. As you might have already guessed, I've been focusing the brunt of my attention on you. But that doesn't mean that I don't have tabs on anyone else, so I thought I'd make it clear to you. From what I've seen, she doesn't seem to be all that upset with your departure from her life. She merely continues to live as if everything was normal. I'd even wager that she thinks that you're probably dead, yet she hasn't done anything to prove such an idea to the contrary. I mean, after four months you'd think someone would have found you by now… yet there's been nothing. Isn't that sad?"

The human was grinding his teeth in anger, dreaming up a thousand different ways to force-feed Eyzn pieces of himself but the quarian cackled as he gave Da'var's side a gentle pat with his palm before he limped over to where Ahrun was suspended over the ground, appraising the younger quarian with interest.

"Now…" Eyzn spread his hands, "you're the one that's been spending so much time with this human, correct? Look at you - young, good height, impressionable. Yes, you'd fit right in here with the rest of my forces. This is our first meeting together, isn't it? Recently plucked from your Pilgrimage, right? No doubt you've already had it explained to you why you're here by this human here, so I'll spare you the unnecessary details."

"It would just bore him anyway," Da'var grunted with a tight smirk.

Eyzn didn't even bother glancing over at the human and instead touched at a haptic button on his omni-tool.

There was a high-pitched whine before light erupted down from the drones hovering over the human.

Da'var roared as electricity from the drones shot up and down his body, momentarily encasing him in jagged blue arcs as a couple hundred volts traveled through him. The human's eyes were shut tight and his jaw paralyzed in a scream as a harsh sizzling noise sliced through the cavernous room. Sparks crackled and Da'var tried to jerk in pain, but the barrier held him tight. Less than five seconds elapsed as Da'var was electrocuted, to Ahrun's horror, but to the human it felt like hours. After which, the current finally stopped, allowing Da'var to take a grateful gasp, laced with pain, as smoke began to rise from his body as a newfound silence was thrown over the scene like a blanket.

The omni-tool deactivated and Eyzn gave a small huff of amusement as he jerked a thumb in Da'var's direction, still staring at Ahrun.

"Do you not find it odd that he deliberately mouths off knowing what his punishment will be like? It's hard to say whether this is insanity on this part, because he is fully aware of what the outcome will entail. After all, he has the scars to remind him. You've seen them, yes? Has he gotten to the point where he's recounted the exact manner in which he received them? Ah, probably not, he hasn't had enough time if he started his tale of woe from the beginning. Do you know that he gave me my limp? Damaged my throat? Or has he not gotten to that part either? That being said, I wonder which of his stories he _has_ chosen to recount to you? It doesn't matter much, they're all relics from a disposable past - the man has even given up his name in this place. If someone can renounce something as personal as a name, what could _you_ part with in order to maintain your integrity?"

"I won't make it easy on you, traitor!" Ahrun spat, surprising himself with his newfound courage while Da'var continued to groan beside him.

Eyzn jerked back in mock surprise, his eyes tilted comically upward. "Traitor? Is _that_ what you think I am? Arrogant boy, now I _know_ that you have not been told my full story from your friend here. If you could put yourself in my place, you too would share the same viewpoint as me. I'm just one of many out of our people that slipped through the societal cracks. I am the result of what happens when you are ignored at every turn, denied the kind of rights bestowed upon an ordinary citizen. Your admirals would rather lie to you, proclaim that how they've governed for centuries is the perfect method, yet they are reluctant to even admit that not every citizen is represented fairly from this style of leadership. Someone might just get a little frustrated at this inequality, don't you think? And, to boot, all this gathered enmity might just come to a head when you are unexpectedly _humiliated_ at the hands of a human one day. Someone might just _snap_."

Rather than waiting for Ahrun to answer, Eyzn tapped at his omni-tool again and now Ahrun screamed as he was assaulted by the deadly electricity. He tried to helplessly spasm away from the agony, but the barrier held him firmly in place as it had for Da'var. All he could do was cry out and clench his eyes shut as the bolts dug deeper into his body - searing his skin and flitting across his heart. He was about to call out to his mother before the electricity receded and he loosed a sob of relief.

"Hmm," Eyzn considered the trembling quarian in front of him. "Perhaps now you will begin to appreciate the precariousness of your situation. Many young men like you have been in your place, promising to withstand what I've prepared for them. They never last. They all beg for the pain to stop and they truly are prepared to do anything for me at that point. That is… all except, this one here."

The geth prime moved out of the way so that Eyzn could step back over to Da'var, who had been glaring at him the entire time that the sadistic alien had been tormenting Ahrun. Another press of the button and Da'var gave a brief yowl as he was shocked once more, but only for less than a second this time. His muscles now quivering helplessly in response to the electrical abuse, Da'var resented the fact that his trembling jaw now made him look afraid in Eyzn's presence.

"Nothing to say, _'Da'var_?'" Eyzn mocked. "Will you remain so maddeningly stoic? Surely you cannot, after all this. Your wife does not care about you. She believes you are dead. I'm torturing your friend over here and still you do not protest. Will you not speak?"

Eyzn pummeled the button again, but this time Ahrun yelled as he was the one being electrocuted this time. Harsh, high-pitched zips and snaps resounded from the crackling bolts and Da'var's eyes widened more and more as the young quarian's screams penetrated his ears.

The human, his empathy once buried deep down within himself, surfaced as the cries of the quarian dug into his brain. He had heard too many people begging like this before in his life - it was a sound that, close up, never failed to sicken him. His eyes felt scratchy, his skin became sweat-soaked and clammy, and his throat instinctively began to act up, causing a shortness of breath.

His next words were pure reflex, but he would never wish to take them back.

" _Me_ , you bastard!" Da'var suddenly raged, his voice carrying above Ahrun's pleas. "It's _me_ you want, Eyzn, not him! If you're going to hurt anyone, hurt me!"

" _I already have, you fool_ ," Eyzn said so quietly that not even his vocabulator emitted it, but he did relent from the electrocution controls, allowing Ahrun to stifle his sobs as the pain slowly faded. Eyzn then walked up closer to the immobilized human and gave a quiet chuckle. "You want to hurt me, don't you? You want to tear me limb from limb?"

"Hell will seem like a paradise compared to what I have in mind for you!" Da'var roared.

Eyzn shrugged. "That might be a little difficult as quarians don't have a comparable concept of a hell."

"You know what I mean, fucker!"

"Very well, I'll concede your point. But why continue to fight, human? Why put yourself in harm's way over and over again? It will only end disastrously for you."

"I don't care," was Da'var's answer. "You know as well as I do that this will only end until one of us is dead."

The sadistic quarian merely sighed as he backed up a couple paces while his gaze, partially obscured by static, was lidded with disappointment.

"Very true," Eyzn said as he lifted a finger to his omni-tool again, poised precariously over a particular glowing button. "But it won't end the way you hope."

Da'var saw Eyzn press the flashing indicator and he braced himself to be subject to the paralyzing torture once more. However, in the milliseconds since Eyzn had depressed the button did Da'var realize that his body was not at all cooking under the spell of a lightning embrace. Instead, the human felt an invisible hand yank him down towards the floor as the stasis barrier that had previously encased him suddenly vanished with a snap, leaving him to fall down heavily, starting with an uncomfortable impact upon his knees. Da'var grunted once as he sprawled out onto the ground, breath momentarily knocked out of him as his limbs began to ache from the new freedom. Gingerly, he stretched his fingers, trying to shake off the atrophy that had begun to encroach upon his once-restricted tendons.

There was a stuttered clicking sound of boots and Da'var raised his head, a line of spittle running down his chin, just in time to see Eyzn kneeling down a couple feet away from him.

The quarian just knelt there, studying the human, a mischievous glint reflected in his eyes. Eyzn raised a hand and beckoned Da'var closer with a finger.

" _Now_ you can hurt me… tough guy."

Da'var stared straight at Eyzn blankly, his mouth still agape, eyes still lifted in momentary hope. It seemed too good to be true - unrestrained, unrestricted, with his foe mere feet away. Tendons trembled in anticipation in the human's arms and his breath exited in a quiet flutter.

Then he moved.

Uttering a brutal roar, Da'var shot to his feet, quicker than Ahrun could have even anticipated from the powerful man, and hurled himself at his sneering tormentor. His hands outstretched, Da'var's feet squealed upon the concrete floor as his heels tug in for traction, spinning his legs like wheels on tarmac as he rushed to crack open Eyzn's head like an overripe tomato. He was only feet away, revenge would be his in seconds.

But the geth prime was even faster, Eyzn's bodyguard and shadow. In his moment of blindness, Da'var had not even considered the geth's presence.

The synthetic sprang forward in the blink of an eye, quicker than any organic could accomplish, in spite of its large size. The red geth simultaneously swung its arm and clipped Da'var upon the side of the head brutally, sending him skidding and tumbling across the floor with a loud yell. He rolled a few times on the hard ground, now further away from Eyzn than when he had started.

Groaning, Da'var looked up. He had not even made it halfway to Eyzn before the prime had intercepted him. With a wet grimace, he tried to stand up again on now unsure legs. His knees wobbled in trepidation and sweat clung his shirt to his back. A fresh cut on his forehead, from the geth's blow, steadily wept blood. A quarter of the human's face was stained red, as fat drops dribbled down his cold skin.

Eyzn edged around the prime, trying to get a better look at the dazed human. The artificial lights made a halo around the quarian, from Da'var's point of view, and he desperately tried to focus his vision from wobbling around too much.

"A disappointment as ever, my brother," Eyzn spread his hands.

Da'var shook his head in a daze and wiped blood out of his eye. Staring at his reddened palm briefly, Da'var then clenched his fist, forcing the red liquid to be squeezed through his fingers.

Blinded by rage and fury, Da'var howled again as he tried to rush Eyzn, but this move was even more futile than the last as the geth prime was positioned almost between the two foes, an immovable object that not even Da'var could overcome.

The prime bent its body slightly and slammed an elbow into Da'var's stomach, expelling his wind with a loud gasp. As Da'var doubled over, the prime used the same elbow to firmly whack the human on his temple, bowling him over as a sickening crack of metal upon bone echoed in the tight space.

"You utter masochist!" Eyzn clapped his hands maniacally.

"Da'var!" Ahrun cried out, horrified that the human was going to be torn apart. "Don't do it! Don't get back up!"

"Yes, _'Da'var_ ,'" hissed Eyzn. "Don't get back up. Just abandon your principles and lie down like your bitch wife."

If there had been any inclinations of submission reflected in the human's body, they all evaporated as Da'var was lit with a new fire within himself. Blinking almost tiredly as he rolled back onto his knees before he slowly rose, he straightened himself, a new bruise now forming magnificently upon the side of his head.

"Not… in your… lifetime," Da'var struggled, but his eyes resonated with a spark of resistance. "You… sadistic… impotent… pathetic… motherfu-,"

"Do it," Eyzn quickly said to the prime.

The geth lashed out before Da'var could finish his sentence, a red fist clocking him square upon the jaw. Da'var was spun completely around from the blow and he collapsed on the ground for a third time. He spat a wide arc of blood onto the floor, dark against the gray concrete, in a volume that the human recognized as very troubling.

Da'var felt the blood sloshing around his mouth. It choked him with its iron taste, filling his nostrils with dread. It streamed down his jaw, staining his skin and beard. Lamely, he tried to crawl on the ground, his legs now refusing to support his weight, as he sought to escape the metallic clomps as the prime came after him.

The human's fingernails harshly scraped on the floor for purchase, but the strength in his arms had fled, rendering him incapable of rising onto his feet. The series of attacks had been so sudden and so powerful that Da'var could no longer put up a decent fight. He had simply been way too rattled. As he haltingly and desperately tried to get up once more, the prime placed a foot squarely on the small of his back, stomping him down and mashing his stomach into the ground. Da'var choked out in pain, his eyes clenched shut as he expelled more blood from his mouth, struggling to breathe.

Shaking his head, Eyzn slowly limped over to where Da'var lay, as the geth continued to grind its armored foot deeper into the human's back.

"Why must we go through this same routine every time?" Eyzn sighed mournfully as he knelt down to get a better look at the pained human. "Always it ends like this. A deep cut here. A broken bone there. Are you so incapable of learning? Where is your reason? What else is there to live for? Or… are you still resisting just to spite me? It is futile, human. I will end up winning either way. You will die, but we don't need to drag this out for longer than necessary. I can grant you peace. Just give in, let me have my revenge, and it will all stop."

There might have been an alternate universe where Da'var would have put some serious consideration to Eyzn's offer. The thought of the pain finally ending, the ache in his heart finally pulling back like the tide from the shore, was a tantalizing thought indeed. No more suppositions, no more nights where he pined with regret. It could all be over… all he needed to do was give in.

But the fire that flickered within Da'var had not been fully extinguished yet. Instead, the human's bloody lips slowly cracked upwards in a delirious grin, showing red-stained teeth. A chuckle wormed its way through Da'var's throat, exiting in a croaky rasp.

Eyzn had his answer.

Behind the faintly strobing blue visor of the quarian, Eyzn scowled, disapproval searing in his eyes. "So continues your education, then," he said dispassionately as he made an almost imperceptible nod towards the prime pinning the human down, who answered with an ear-splitting seven-note warble that shook Da'var's very foundation.

Da'var then found his left arm suddenly wrenched behind him, up into the air, by the prime. His shoulder socket was strained as the limb was rotated back, his hamstrings already crying out in protest as they stretched far beyond their natural limits. Da'var limply tried to hold on, knowing what was going to occur.

The prime twisted Da'var's arm in its grip. There was a snap.

The human howled as his radius bone fractured, a shuddering jolt that jittered up to Da'var's fingertips painfully. The geth released its hold on Da'var's arm, letting it fall back down to the ground as carelessly as one would dispose of the trash. Da'var jolted as his broken arm hit the pavement and he gurgled a soft note of agony before his eyelids fluttered and he went limp, his head falling into a puddle of his own blood while the rest of it coagulated around his face.

Eyzn gave a frustrated noise as his efforts to produce results proved to be fruitless. Standing up from the twitching human, he gave a curt gesture for the prime to follow, which it did closely behind him. As the two exited, Eyzn touched his omni-tool for the final time, releasing Ahrun from the paralytic grip of the stasis barrier, spilling him out on the floor with a painful thud.

" _Da'var_ ," Ahrun croaked out as he numbly crawled over to where the human lay. There was so much blood on the floor that Ahrun feared that the human may be dying and as he came up to the man, the quarian reached out and limply placed a hand upon Da'var's shoulder, uncertain at what he should do.

Da'var stiffened, his eyes focusing into the beyond, uncomprehending Ahrun's presence. He gave a wheeze, his body shuddering with the effort.

The last thing Da'var saw in his mind's eye before his body finally had enough was the milky image of a slim figure kneeling close by to him, breathy words flitting into his ear. He imagined soft hands passionately caressing his back, six fingers gently kneading the muscles that clenched there. He tried to look up at the mirage, from the bare three-toed foot, up their muscular calves with their gray skin looking white in the searing light, to their tight waist, the tastefully covered curve of a breast, and finally a longing face staring serenely at him, holding his image with love in their eyes as a smile graced her features.

" _Nya…_ " was Da'var's final whisper before he lost consciousness.

Ahrun almost cried out in despair as the human's eyes closed, but he quieted himself just long enough to realize that Da'var was still breathing, albeit very poorly. Very gently, Ahrun rolled Da'var over, knowing that he needed to keep the man's airway clear in case he would choke on his own blood. He touched the broken man's forehead, uncomprehending the amount of cruelty that the human had sustained, and the type of rage that he had brought down upon himself.

How could one come to hate a man so much?

"No, Da'var," Ahrun soothed the softly wheezing man. "You can't die. Not yet. I still need to hear the rest of your story…"

* * *

 **A/N: This will be the last of the Idyll chapters, FYI. Which means that the following chapters will be longer than these three have been, so it's going to take more time between submissions. We're still not halfway done with this story, so for those of you following this, you're going to still have a good load of content coming in the coming months... assuming a vengeful reader doesn't run me over by then.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Eyzn's Rage: "Welcome to the Real World" by Hans Zimmer and Andrew Kawczynski from the film _Chappie_**


	10. Chapter 7: Tranquility Deconstructed

_Four months earlier  
The Citadel – Docking Bay Y64  
RESUMING __NORMAL TIMELINE_

With a tremendous clatter and a cacophony of bangs, a selection of kitchen appliances fell loudly to the hard ground of my shuttle right as I let out a harsh scream of frustration, having been the one who shoved the appliances down to the floor in the first place. As the kitchenware had scraped along the counter towards the edge, seemingly in slow-motion, it felt almost laborious for me to overcome the force of friction by pushing a simple, easily heft-able load towards where the counter ceased to exist, letting gravity do the rest of the work for me. Viewed through a regular lens, it would have simply looked like I had lashed out in a rage, reacting impetuously in nanoseconds, brutally swiping my arms to send a cadre of pots and pans flying off the counter seemingly without cause.

Enamelware cracked and shattered upon full contact with the shuttle's hard floor. Motes of dust, frothing from the splintered coating, blew up into the air like a harsh puff of wind had caused them to flurry in a sudden gust. Million and millions and millions and millions of irreparable bits, all scattered and dispersed upon my kitchen floor, generated from my own doing.

Sharp shards of the glassy enamel surrounded my feet, threatening to impale me through my shoes. The light tinkling of tumbling fragments was as delicate as china. Just as easy to break as it would be for a crib.

Or a life.

"God… god _damn it!_ " I bellowed again in the stale and confined kitchen, throwing open the cabinet doors and clumsily spilling forth the contents that remained inside, possessed by a gratuitous furor.

Individual plates and bowls tumbled out almost eagerly, ready to join their broken brethren that lined the ground all around my person. The dishes themselves held no sentimental value to me, but the deafening clash of more fragile items breaking, amplified by the enamel-on-enamel contact, was enough to give me pause and to yaw my jaw, momentarily caught off guard by the sheer noise. At the back of my tongue, once again I could discern the taste of blood. My constant screaming was aggravating my throat… yet despite this knowledge I continued to rashly act as if I had no injury at all.

All the pain, mental and physical, had dulled my nerves after living with it for so long. I had almost grown accustomed to the feeling, to the lingering presence of old wounds threatening to break open, wounds that refused to heal.

Or maybe… I was _deliberately_ not allowing myself to heal as some sort of unconscious penance. Wouldn't be surprising, seeing as I could barely control my own raging emotions these days.

Even I could not justify to myself why I had reacted with that final, cruel gesture to my own wife not even an hour ago, even though I had been the victim of one of the worst assaults I had gone through in my life. I had been cowering in the room of my child, subject to her vicious and slashing words baselessly accusing me of a heinous crime, driven forth from a deep and rooted grief, while I was losing my sanity as each syllable crashed upon my defenses. I don't know why I had thought that I could endure Nya's rage. I could have just left the apartment. I _should_ have just left the apartment. Instead, I had destroyed with my own two hands the last resting place my daughter had inhabited while she had still been alive, in an effort to silence the hurtful spite being spewed in my direction.

I might as well have killed her lingering memory. Add it to the list of regrets that I yearned to take back.

Nya had been left there on the ground, her sobs still ringing in my ears. I had broken down myself on the elevator ride out of the building, ashamed at the cruelty that I had lashed out with. It wasn't fair - I had been saving that malice for Eyzn, not Nya! But I had only one person within arm's reach to display my anger and frustration, something that Nya had unintentionally unlocked when she had made the damning decision to level such a bald-faced lie to me. Did she really think that I intentionally killed my own daughter? The audacity… the _madness_ of it all! What in the name of all that was holy could have provoked her to even say such a thing, to even think it?! The stupidity of her statement, combined with the notion that I had possessed such malevolence to intentionally murder a baby - _my_ baby - because she didn't carry any my genes… it had pushed me over the edge.

But I had only cemented her reasoning to hate me even more after today.

Fuck.

"Damn you, Nya," I uttered as I leaned over the counter, my arms trembling something fierce as my devastation of the room around me went temporarily ignored. "I still can't let you go. Why was it so easy for _you?_ I _loved_ that child. You know that… so why did you say such a thing like that?"

"Samuel?" an electronic voice pierced my bubble of solitude.

Immediately, without thinking, I picked up a glass from the counter next to me and hurled it in the direction of the speaker. There was a clear, almost visually imperceptible explosion as it hit the wall, mere inches away from Sagan, who stood in the doorway. The geth looked mildly in at the remains of the glass on the ground before his optics focused on me in confusion.

"Get the hell out, Sagan," I snarled, secretly embarrassed that the geth had to witness me in the middle of a breakdown.

"Negative, Samuel," was the synthetic's even response.

My face contorted in fury, I hefted another glass and threw it too. The container barely sailed by the top of Sagan's housing before it shattered into a million more pieces beyond in the hallway. Oh, wouldn't it be grand if Eyzn had been standing there instead of Sagan? I would have paid all the money in the galaxy just to watch a glass smash right in the middle of that quarian's stupid head.

"You… unbearable geth!" I growled as I grabbed a stray frying pan and marched over in his direction, holding the appliance at my side. "Why don't you just leave, huh? Leave me just like everyone else has! Why do you constantly follow me around everywhere? You don't need to be here!"

It was probably fortuitous that Sagan did not possess any facial expressions, otherwise I would have been fighting the urge to slug him in the face from his perceived indifference.

"You are in distress, Samuel," Sagan said. "We will disregard any directives that you issue for a short period due to your current emotional temperament. Our departure will not lead you to any solution in your favor, so we choose to remain."

"I'm not looking for a solution to _anything_ , you idiot! I just want to be left alone!"

"There is an increased probability that leaving you unattended will result in impulsive decisions being performed in a vacuum of your own making. It would defy protocol to note this pattern of behavior and not to devise some preventative safeguard to discourage it."

A crazed smile slowly spread across my face. "Impulsive decisions, eh?" I mocked. "That's a good one, Sagan. Because for all the effort and planning that I've done to support my family, it's only backfired upon me spectacularly and it's continuing to snowball. With my kid dead, my wife on the verge of divorcing me, and a step-brother of sorts looking to rip my heart out, you tell me _what the fuck I can possibly do that doesn't seem impulsive?!_ "

I swung the frying pan as I bellowed forth my impotent rage, smashing the appliance upon the wall and breaking the cast-iron pan off at the handle. The material of the wall cracked from the force of my blow though and my arms were left vibrating as the impact traveled up them to resonate within my body.

The pan heavily bounced on the ground and rolled between the two of us only to stop with a sad rattle, leaving me holding a chromed handle, looking all pathetic while Sagan continued to gaze at me. I could almost imagine the geth's disappointment at me right now.

" _Oh man_ ," I whispered to myself as I suddenly came to my senses, lamely staring at the handle that I still held, at the spot where it had sheared off.

 _Indeed, Sam. You only prove everyone else correct._

Before I could muster out a half-hearted explanation, there was a soft ringing out into the hallway, not emanating near the two of us - Sagan and I - which completely pulled me back to reality. Someone was requesting access to the shuttle via intercom alert. Blinking, I realized that I had walked right up to the yellow-armored geth after my last outburst, to less than a foot away from Sagan's unwavering stare. Realizing how much of a fool I must look like, I withdrew away from Sagan, feeling even more ashamed than from before. The handle of the frying pan finally dropped from my fingers and clanged around obnoxiously as I nearly staggered over to the wall, an invisible hand beginning to constrict my lungs.

An apology nearly escaped my lips, but for some reason it died en route before it could be voiced. Did I think that the geth would not accept my contriteness for the outburst? Maybe I was afraid that all my apologies had lost their sincerity over the months. Words hold a lot of power, but in the end it's our actions that resonate the most long after we're gone.

At the very least, I hoped that Sagan could understand and interpret the long and remorseful look that I gave him that I, in some small way, knew that the geth did not deserve to be subject to my vitriol. All this hatred that bled from the invisible wound in my body… it was something I hemorrhaged and had no control over. It was spreading to everyone who was around me and I was a lone piece of driftwood subject to the raging current of a river, powerless to halt its advance.

I had to stem this agony before it poisoned everyone I cared about.

Sheepish, I edged around the geth to head to the main airlock to welcome our visitor. I used the exterior camera to discern exactly who it was that had come calling at this time. One never knows - perhaps Eyzn had decided to utilize the most direct route of trying to get to me, a move that would admittedly be unanticipated on my end.

Imagine my surprise and relief to find Chandler patiently waiting outside instead.

"I was hoping I'd catch you here," he panted after I had opened the door, allowing him inside. He flashed a dazzling smile which quickly cooled as he beheld the state of my ship's interior. "The heck happened here? Did you set off a grenade or something?"

"I was… redecorating," I lied.

The dumbest person who ever lived would have been hard-pressed to believe the veracity of that statement because it really did look like I had invited a demolition derby onto my ship. Obviously, Chandler did not believe me yet he smirked and shrugged in response.

"How'd you even know I was here?" I asked as I locked the door behind my friend, taking note that my blood pressure was beginning to die down a bit as the throb in my temples began to noticeably subside.

"Thank Sagan for that," Chandler said as he headed into the kitchen, traversing his way around the broken bits that I had created during my little tantrum. "He shot me a message a few minutes ago - seemed worried about you, Sam. Thought you would try something a little… rash."

I glared at Sagan, but not in anger. Instead, it was with a mix of apprehension and a little gratefulness. How many tricks did this geth have up his sleeve? Now I knew Sagan was more perceptive than he let on.

"He did, huh?" I made sure to emphasize the unassuming nature of the question while still staring straight at the geth. A wasted effort - Sagan was not going to give me any tells, at least nothing that I could visually perceive.

"Sure did. Surprised me as well, to be honest. I have to admit that I didn't think that a geth could possibly be… so… insightful."

Chandler had trailed off because he was finally able to discern the extent of the devastation that I had wreaked within the kitchen - bull in the china shop. He stared blankly at the smashed plates, the shattered glass, and he shook his head mournfully. No question that he was disappointed that I could be so careless.

" _Aw… dammit, Sam_ ," I heard him whisper to himself before he raised his voice again. "Do you… want to tell me what really happened here?"

He was giving me a chance to save face, but I gave a limp shrug. "I could attribute all this to a drunken binge, but I'm unfortunately stone-cold sober right at the moment. I… had a rough time an hour ago."

"You talked with Nya, didn't you?" Chandler gave a sympathetic smile.

I hesitated a bit before I nodded ever so slightly.

"Was it really that bad?"

"Worse than you could imagine," I admitted.

There was a different kind of pain that Chandler radiated - a kind of helplessness that could only be created by someone on the wrong side of an impenetrable barrier, knowing that they were useless and could therefore not provide any help.

"How about I make you a drink then?" Chandler offered, reverting to a cheer look after a temporary flash of melancholy. "Nothing too strong, of course."

"Trying to butter me up to get me to talk?" I mustered a knowing look, but not entirely opposed to the offer.

"If you'd rather not talk about it, all you have to do is say so."

Yet I did not think that I would be able to keep these words bottled up for very long. I had so many things that I wanted to say, that I wished to share. The combined events of the past few days all swirled around in a messy torrent within my head, keeping me from being able to divine understanding and a clear state of mind.

Meanwhile, Chandler, knowing where I kept my liquor, had already busied himself in the preparation of our drinks. He brandished a bottle of Elijah Craig and said to me, "Do you mind if I use this?"

I did not and responded with a gruff gesture.

A few minutes later, and after Chandler came over to the booth that I was sitting at, after I had dusted the cushy surface clear of broken glass first. The bourbon sour tasted more like lemon than bourbon upon the first sip, which was probably a good thing. Since Chandler had watered down the drinks down to a point where I would not get the inclination to do something stupid under the influence of alcohol by consuming it, any boorish behavior on my end could be attributed to my sorry disposition instead of an intoxicated state. Smart move, that.

I had probably drained about half my drink, barely even discerning the bite of liquor (even though I could feel it acidly biting my throat) before I smacked my lips, quenched enough to carry on a conversation.

"I've made things worse, you know," I began, staring off mournfully into space.

Chandler took a careful sip of his own drink, keeping his expression neutral. "Just by talking to Nya? Come on, it couldn't have been all that bad. Unless… don't tell me you guys are getting a divorce?"

In spite of myself, I gave a mirthless chuckle. "If Nya were human, she probably _would_ have divorced me by now, to be honest. But no… I don't even think that quarians even have an inclination to divorce a spouse, even though there is a precedent for such a thing in their culture. It's very rare, though, and it only happens in extraordinary circumstances. Nah, it's just… I'm just so frustrated with her. Frustrated with myself, too. I've completely fucked things up between us because of my own stupid decisions and I should have known that I couldn't fix things between us right away."

Chandler briefly looked down at his drink before he raised his head back up to glance at me, uncertainty reflected in his eyes.

"Is that what you really think, Sam? Because to Rie and I, it looks like you guys are being way too hard on yourselves."

"Can you blame me?"

My friend's expression turned blank before he finally looked away in shame. "I haven't gone what you have, so… I don't think I'll ever fully understand your plight, even though the solution seems obvious."

"Well, if you have a solution, Chandler, by all means, share it. No sarcasm here, if you've got a suggestion beyond what I've tried to do and failed at, I'd honestly like to hear it. If there is some way that I can get through to my childless and clinically depressed wife, I'm all ears."

Chandler visibly paled but my own look remained stoic, completely serious with my intent. Perhaps he was reconsidering his tip in my direction as he gave further thought to the steep challenges that blocked his path.

He deflated in a sigh, obviously trying to find a route that would lead to the least amount of conflict between Nya and I. Unfortunately for us both, after giving it some thought, he had apparently failed. His optimism turned out to be premature.

"Maybe… what I have to say would probably be inappropriate, considering my ignorance."

It was rare for someone, even with my experience, to admit that what they had to say would not be good enough. If anything, I respected Chandler even more for his cognizance. Shame that a solution still had yet to be plucked from the air, though.

Chandler took a hearty swig of his drink. "So why do you think that you made things worse by talking to Nya? You still haven't told me."

That was because I had actually forgotten the question, even in such a short time span.

"When I had gone over to our apartment, I tried my best to be polite to her. At first. I really tried, but from the moment she opened the door, she was… cold to me. Like I was a stranger in our own apartment. I told her about Eyzn, what he planned to do to us, but she didn't appear fazed. It was like what I had to say, despite the implications, automatically meant nothing to her as long as it came from my own mouth. I had broken her trust too badly for her to take me seriously."

"Maybe if she had some time to see the proof of-,"

"I then smashed our crib into the wall," I finished around a tight throat.

"Oh fuck," Chandler blurted out, his eyes widening in surprise.

"That's pretty much what Nya said to me after I did that," I pointed out.

The man sitting across from me tiredly rubbed at his eyes and pushed his glass to the side of the table so that he could rest his elbows in the spot the drink had previously occupied. I think that I could pinpoint this moment as the point in time where Chandler's esteem of me dwindled significantly.

"What the hell possessed you to do _that?_ " Chandler groaned.

That was a question that I had been asking myself repeatedly ever since I had done the stupid deed. It would be the easiest thing to simply deflect the blame partially by indicating that it had been Nya's goading that had sent me over the edge, which in some cases was the truth. Doing that, though, would not fully redeem me in Chandler's eyes, but it was a legitimate way to justify the mistake that I had made.

But how would Nya justify _her_ goading, then? After all, I was the one who had brought about her current circumstance, so in a way Nya could trace the source of all her misery back to me. We could run about this in an endless cycle of blame and distortion, our tempers only being more and more fueled from our inability to definitively state where the end lay.

Violence begets violence. If our tempers continued to flare at such a rate, there will be nothing in this galaxy capable of cooling them.

I had apparently been silent for an awkward moment, so Chandler had to scoot over to place a hand gently upon my shoulder.

"You ever think that you might be playing into Eyzn's hands?" he asked. "This is exactly the kind of thing he's looking to get out from his efforts. This wedge between you and Nya… Eyzn only wants to drive it in further."

"You think I don't know that?" I grimaced as I suddenly rose from the booth and savagely shoved my hands into my pockets. "The bastard continues to remain one step ahead of me as I still cannot get a grip on my personal life. Now I have to deal with this shit." I kicked at a large shard of a plate and watched it clatter into a corner. "It's all getting out of hand, Chandler. I'm one step away from losing it completely. I can't keep going on like this, knowing that I'll never get the chance to talk to Nya directly anymore. I gave up that right the moment I destroyed that damn crib."

"What if there's another way?" Chandler suddenly pointed out.

I stopped trudging in the middle of the kitchen. "What do you mean?"

"I can probably help her trust you a little more, if you think my idea has legs."

Skeptical as I was, I allowed myself to hope. "Go on."

"This is probably just wishful thinking but… what if I were to mediate a conversation between you two? You know, set things up between the three of us. I can do all the talking on your behalf on neutral ground so that everyone will be on their best behavior. Rie's busy at the moment, so I won't bother her with this. Sagan can come, of course. If you want, I don't even have to be physically present - you can simply set me up in a holo-conference to act as a third-party."

"We will be amenable to offer assistance as well," I heard the geth pipe in from around the corner.

I was nothing if not dubious, but I scratched at my chin, deeply in thought.

"It won't be easy to convince her to go anywhere that I will be," I said. "You're going to have to move heaven and earth to get Nya to agree to this."

"You never know unless you try, right?" Chandler indicated. "I mean, if you think this is a bad idea-,"

"No," I cut him off. "It certainly has merit. I… as painful as talking to her might be, I am certainly willing to try this out. Getting Nya to come along is going to be the hard part. I wouldn't be surprised if she refuses you straight out because I really have acted like a dick to her."

"I can be pretty persuasive when I want to be, Sam."

"Well then, if you think that you have a shot, then go for it. Talk to her for me. Be sure to indicate that I am so sorry for what I just did to her. I want her to know that, no matter what she may think of me, she never has deserved my anger."

Chandler, in all his sensitivity, did not appear to judge but gave a knowing nod. "I'll be sure to relay that to her. Do you know of a place that you'd want to hold such a meeting? Probably not a good idea to have it on the Citadel, would be my guess."

"Yeah, I do," I said as I walked over to the closet, sweeping aside broken fragments of enamel with my feet, making a path. "Tell her that, if she's willing to hear my apology in person, that I want to meet her in two days' time at our _home_. Our _real_ home. She'll understand the significance of that."

"If you say so," Chandler acquiesced as he watched me throw on a jacket. "You going somewhere, Sam?"

I shot my arms through the heavy and dark material of the jacket, eagerly anticipating the shield of warmth to envelop me in its cozy embrace.

"Yeah, I am," I said, a newfound steel locking itself to my spine. "There's just one last stop I've got to make before I head out. Come on, Sagan. We're leaving."

The geth did not protest as I immediately left the ship and bounded off in a hurry so that he could match my gait. In a flash, a dumbfounded Chandler was left all alone in the remains of the shattered kitchen, startled at how quiet the ship managed to get in the absence of anyone else. He privately mused that he might have underestimated the severity of the challenge that lay before him, but he still remained unflappable, still holding out to a tiny shred of confidence that he could help lead me and my wife to some semblance of inner peace.

The poor deluded bastard, that Chandler.

* * *

 _Sagan_ _  
En route_

The contours of the skycar had not been designed to accommodate geth dimensions but since Sagan lacked the capacity to feel discomfort, that aspect went unnoticed. The synthetic looked a little awkward, though, crammed into a seat that barely was able to fit the geth's lanky frame, yet the fact that Sagan had his hands folded over his lap in an imitation of what the human next to him was doing spoke volumes about his capacity to learn.

Like the human, Sagan stared straight ahead through the curved canopy of the skycar. Lights of all shapes and colors trickled by in a dribble of luminescence, but Sagan did not have an eye to study such beauty. Material aspects were lost on the geth, as were the pleasing lineaments of symmetry that imparted themselves onto random everyday objects.

In a sense, the closest thing that could cause Sagan to feel anything close to wonder was the presence of patterns hidden within the galaxy. Fibonacci. Pi. Fractals. Infinite sequences of numbers that defined the atomic construction of matter were fascinating to the synthetic. Math was the backbone to existence, to life both organic and inorganic. Tiny pieces of the puzzle were hidden everywhere, whether it was the presence of a perfect circle, the formation of a star cluster, or even the bottomless gravitational well of a black hole did Sagan realize that he alone could not comprehend the grand mathematical formula that the universe so constantly hinted at.

Sagan never got frustrated. He never understood the point of getting frustrated, never mind the process to achieve such a state, but the geth constantly wondered why life was so purposeless. Organics never seemed to possess a clear indication for their course of action throughout their lifespans. Chemical reactions constantly mixing in a turgid brew in a nervous system created their capacity to make decisions, to carry out the whim of a thought. All driven as responses to stimuli rather than the anticipation of interaction.

It was different for Sagan. He had been created, not born. He was a being of silicon, copper, oxides, carbon alloys, and electricity. Each individual component within him had been designed for a specific purpose, crafted with precise care and thought. For all intents and purposes, the geth form was superior to that of any organic species. No one had a say in shaping an organic's digestive tract, for instance. Sagan even noted that, despite life's tendency to evolve, there still existed clear disadvantages and errors in many species that seemed to defy explanation, such as the weak immune systems of his Creators (a severely restrictive attribute), the originally high birth rate of the long-lived krogan (a growth rate that would have resulted in a shortage of natural resources had it not been curbed centuries ago), and the existence of an appendix in humans (which was, all things considered, an organ that had no use whatsoever).

Sagan understood the existence of these biological errors. What he did not understand was the rationale for why these errors had been allowed to exist in the first place.

As a synthetic, derived solutions mandated that corrections be made instantaneously to facilitate better progress towards the achievement of the objective. Sagan could interpret an action that he would need to make and act accordingly with respect to his current duties. Organics hesitated when confronted with change, with uncertainty. Again, Sagan could pinpoint the construction of the nervous system as being the primary culprit for this trait. It was an organ that Sagan could not hope to fully understand - but what he did know was that many of the problems Samuel was facing all stemmed from his head.

It was either a rock or a hard place for Sagan. The geth was observant enough to note that many of the symptoms that he had heard Samuel describe about Creator McLeod were, in fact, similar symptoms that Samuel himself was exhibiting. Illogical decision-making. Violent mood-swings. A breakdown of higher thinking. All clear signs of this disorder that had been previously described to him as "depression."

Ordinarily, Sagan would have mentioned this sort of mental lapse to Samuel a long time ago, but the current circumstances had persuaded the geth from doing just that. Logic was being followed less and less by the human as time went on - and such a dramatic declaration of the human's own mental dichotomy had a high probability of inciting a reaction of rage from Samuel, which was not the sort of feedback that Sagan was looking to achieve. The geth had already made the decision to remain mum on Samuel's behavior, but he was certainly able to pinpoint the pros and cons of both decisions. As terrible as it might seem, Sagan felt that it was better to risk Samuel's mental health gradually deteriorating over a period of time rather than potentially destroying it all in one fell swoop by bringing these destructive tendencies to the human's attention.

Maybe… the geth considered, he now understood how frustration was derived.

The invisible threads that linked the human to his mate, Creator McLeod, were being shorn apart with each passing hour. Each situation they had spent in close proximity since their shattering point with the death of their daughter had resulted in nothing but fractious attitudes and darkened moods. Sagan had spent the better part of an hour about every day since their separation, pondering the steps it would take to bring the two back together in a more harmonious relationship.

The geth came up with nothing but NULL values each time.

There was simply not enough data, not enough stimuli, for Sagan to formulate a solution, not even an estimate. Every single time, Sagan was hampered by his inability to understand the mental anguish losing a child can cause. If comprehending emotions was enough to overwhelm Sagan's capacity for perception, then the reproductive urges of organics were beyond him. The construction of familial hierarchies could be visualized clearly to him, but Sagan knew that its view on raising a family was an altogether clinical and unemotional perspective. He was incapable of providing comfort and understanding on that front.

As the skycar floated on through the frigid vacuum of space, Sagan continued to silently ponder, realizing that his shortcomings on organic comprehension were proving to be a hindrance to his learning progress. The geth knew that if a resolution could not be found in a timely manner to solve the crisis that Samuel faced with his mate, then what should have been a lifelong relationship as strong as hull metal, will prove to wind up in tatters, as fragile as paper.

* * *

 _Rie_ _  
Huerta Memorial Hospital_

The turian bristled as she entered the nearly pitch-black interior of one of the hospital's many visualization rooms, the door sliding sinisterly shut behind her, nearly enveloping her in darkness. The cold, sterile scent of the medial institution was choked out as soon as she entered the gloomy expanse, sending relief to her sensitive nostrils. In its place, Rie could detect the vaguest acrid hint of ozone, causing her mandibles to briefly bristle in the new environment, as if she had passed through a slight barrier of static electricity.

There was a stand next to the door that contained a rack of visors with a thin and wide piece of glass serving as the lens, unremarkable at first glance. Rie took one of these visors and slipped it over her eyes and streams of aqua light were strewn across the glass as the visor detected that it was now attached to a head, formulating in tiny little icons and symbols across the transparent face, cluttering the turian's vision with tiny fragments and morsels of amplified context.

There was a glassy black circle positioned in the center of the room, obsidian-like. The moment that Rie stepped into it, two round outlines, one red and one blue, both positioned within the black circle, glowed malevolently. Holographic crystals warmed and a cylindrical grid rose from the circumference of the black surface, made entirely out of shaped light. In front of Rie's eyes, through the looking glass her visor provided, a simple menu popped out of thin air, shimmering a golden wheat color, a couple simple sentences imprinted upon its face.

 _Welcome to Huerta! Press anywhere to get started._

"Nothing ventured," Rie managed through bated breath as she reached out a slender finger to tap at the intangible slate, causing a soft beep to form and a query bar to come into view.

Rie lifted her arms tentatively, trying to get used to working in this virtual landscape. This technology had only been donated to Huerta a few years ago so in terms of functionality it was very limited and Rie had not accumulated enough time with it yet to become fully accustomed to how it worked.

The Woz Augmented Reality Channel utilized technology that was actually more than a century old, fabricated back on Earth and named after a beloved computer science inventor. It had been refined over the years by various other companies when the patent could be licensed out. Too expensive for home use, the WARC had found a home in being adapted for specialized services, mainly for engineering firms and laboratories. Being able to manipulate a virtual environment with someone's own hands instead of having to manipulate a cursor on a comparatively primitive screen opened up a realm of possibilities that had been previously unattainable, a method of machination that still had merit to this day.

The WARC that Rie was using was supposed to assist with providing doctors with detailed surgical scans that could be shared in real-time in addition to providing a new peripheral for various other duties such as driving nanobots through a 3D representation of a vein or taking control over an entire suite of equipment that could perform a wide swath of complex operations in hours that would normally take a six person team half a day to accomplish. However, Rie was using the WARC right now because it was still being tested to accommodate itself within Huerta's databases, meaning that in addition to the privacy that this room afforded, all her browsing activity was not being monitored, nor would it be stored as the WARC would receive a clean install once its systems had been completely integrated. Rie was not normally a paranoid person, but she felt that she should be rather prudent with the information that she was about to access. There would be some people that would object to where she was prying.

"Access prior medical history," Rie announced to the darkness as she folded her arms across her chest, the tight white jumpsuit of her medical uniform angrily pulling at her carapace while the grid of light slowly rotated around her.

" _Specify filter, please,_ " the WARC intoned in a synthetic female voice.

"Surname: McLeod."

There was barely a discernible pause as the machine buzzed through the files. The WARC's next response was so quick it was as if Rie was carrying on an actual conversation with it.

" _Three files located. Which one would you like to access?_ "

"Intone file names," Rie ordered.

" _Samuel. Nyareth. Unknown. Three files corresponding to surname McLeod."_

"Open file 'Unknown.'"

Wordlessly, a document, surrounded by a bright blue border, appeared in mid-air through Rie's goggles. She reached out and pinched at emptiness, but what she saw, thanks to her visor, was that she was grasping the corner of the document and visibly dragging it toward her. She brought it to within a distance that she was able to easily read, her yellow eyes no longer having to squint to make out the electronic text.

The complete medical history of Sam's daughter, all at her fingertips. Rie tried to control her anticipation and fear, knowing that if Sam found out that she had been looking at this that he would hit the roof.

But the more she lingered upon this first document, the further Rie's heart sank. Since Sam's daughter had barely lived a week, there was not much for her to look over. What she had clutched in her hands barely amounted to a glorified birth certificate, which denoted the date and time that she had been born, the names of the parents, and everything else that was altogether useless to Rie. The first name section was left blank, but that was due to the indecision of the parents at the time their child had been born.

Rie gave a grunt of frustration. There was nothing here that she could learn, no route towards figuring out exactly what went wrong with Sam's daughter. Unless...

Rie looked down and spotted an icon at the bottom right corner of the document - the symbol that indicated that there were more pages of the document to peruse. Aha! Rie knew that she had not been seeing everything. It had taken her a bit to figure out how this operating system worked, is all.

With renewed vigor, she tapped at the icon.

The WARC angrily beeped back at her.

The page refused to open.

"What in the…" Rie muttered as she leaned in to peer at the document. She tried tapping at the icon over and over again in a vain attempt to gain access, but she would be denied every time.

Someone had placed a lock over the document's contents. Rie was shut out from accessing anything beyond the first page.

But she was not about to give up so easily.

"Activate root access," she ordered. "Token authentication provided. Open document on 'Unknown,' surname 'McLeod.'"

The WARC's security protocols had not been finalized yet, either. Since Rie was one of the trusted few individuals who could access the WARC in the first place, she had the ability to request root access and make any modifications that she saw fit, bypassing most security locks that were in place.

With a more agreeable ding, the document unfolded in front of her to reveal nine complete pages of text, all pertaining to Sam's daughter. Rie's eagerness briefly blossomed before it withered within her after she had taken a first pass to scan all the pages that had been provided.

The content of all the pages had been blurred out.

Incredulous, Rie tapped on one of the blurred sections as though if she could find additional context-sensitive menus that were hidden in the UI. No such luck, the blurred lines remained as they were.

"Reveal content," Rie whispered.

" _Access denied_ ," the WARC warbled back.

"Link token authentication," Rie tried again. "Grant level 1 file access."

" _Access denied. You are not one of the users permitted to view this file_."

That was odd. Usually Rie had access to most patient files. She had to have this sort of access if she was expected to do her job, at the very least.

"List allowed users," Rie stated. Maybe if she knew someone in the building that had access, she could perhaps cajole them into giving her a temporary account?

" _This file may only be viewed by the parents or primary guardians of 'McLeod, Unknown' or from the corresponding user that had created this file_."

"So who is the user that created this file?"

" _Redacted_ ," the WARC said, and that was all.

"Dammit," Rie growled. Dead end. All this way for nothing.

Now there were even more things that did not make a lick of sense to Rie. Who besides Nya and Sam had locked the document? Which doctor out of all the ones employed at Huerta would have been the one to keep such a thing a secret? And for that matter, why would such a document need to be kept secret at all?

But right as she was about to close the document, one of the few un-blurred titles on the top of the second page caught her eye. For some reason, they now seared into her eyes, vividly clear compared to the other myopic lines.

It read: _Cause of death determined by autopsy to be organ failure_.

The details were locked, but that sentence was enough to stop Rie cold. She halted in place, fingers grazing the electronic tablets that were suspended before her.

Organ failure.

Autopsy.

There had been an _autopsy_ , Rie realized. But… Sam and Nya had indicated that they did not perform an autopsy, because the both of them figured that it would be too upsetting to go through with such a procedure. But if this document was correct, and an autopsy had been performed, who was the one that ordered it? The details of how Sam's daughter died were all in this file, but maddeningly, Rie could not open it. Why all this cloak and dagger shit?

Why was there so much secrecy surrounding the death of an infant?

Sam had to see this, Rie decided as she furiously closed all open tabs with a savage wave of her arm. Damn the consequences when he realized that she had been snooping around his private life. If he had the ability to access this file, then he deserved to know the truth if he really did kill his own child on accident or not.

If this meant the end of this destructive feud, then Rie felt it was her obligation to do whatever was in her power to fix it.

She just hoped that Sam was still on the Citadel.

* * *

 _Sam_ _  
The Citadel - 3rd Arm Wards_

I _was_ still on the Citadel, but not for very long. I had plans to leave within the hour, but I needed to visit one last person before I left.

For almost half an hour, I had been positioned suspiciously just around the corner that looked out to the walkway that lined the populated shopping avenue just a story below. For every time that I had heard footsteps emanate from the direction I was scoping, I would take quick glances just to confirm that the person I was looking for was arriving at their place. I knew they weren't at home right now but that they would be back very soon, knowing that they tended not to wander very far when they left their place.

And eventually, my patience was rewarded.

I managed to spot the familiar figure when I had taken my periodic peek, beholding their form waving their omni-tool in front of the door so that they could be allowed in. Even at this distance, I could still hear the telltale click and whirr of the locking mechanisms disengaging as the door slid aside.

That was when I moved, Sagan right at my heels.

The soles of my shoes thankfully made little noise as I broke out into a fast walk. I did not have much ground to cover so I was able to make it to the door way before it had begun to close. Sagan, adopting my silent style of walking, also made it in with me, being ninja quiet to help me keep the element of surprise for as long as possible. Still unseen by the individual as I entered his threshold, I silently reached out and grabbed the back of their neck while I jammed a fist into the small of their spine, mimicking that a weapon was in my grip. I heard the man give a startled cry before I suddenly pushed him in a rapid fashion forward across the cramped space of the apartment and brought him face-down on the nearby couch, pinning him to the comfy surface, his head pressed sideways at an uncomfortable angle.

I had a firm grip on the person's enviro-suit, my fingers well away from any of the metal adorning them so that they would not be agonizingly pinched. The man's eyes were terrified behind his visor and they looked to me in horror as he tried to glean his predicament, too caught off guard to even muster a decent struggle.

"What is…" the man began to yell out, hopelessly confused as he pathetically thrashed in my grip. "What are you _doing?!_ "

"You didn't think that you'd be rid of me so soon, did you, Iroa?" I grimaced as I held the elder quarian down. I don't think I had caused any damage at all to the man during my passive break-in, but it was obvious that he was quite startled at my sudden appearance.

Iroa began to panic as he began to realize the extent of how he was restrained. "This… you can't be here, Sam. You know what happened last time. My parole… the tracker…"

"Ah yes," I nodded sagely. "You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? Well, one of the benefits of having a geth on your team is that they have the ability to suppress any passive alerts that our respective networks might emit. Safe to say, no one's going to be barging in upon us anytime soon, so it's just us guys."

"At least let me go, then!"

"Not yet!" I seethed, giving the man a shove further onto the couch. "Not until you set Eyzn straight for me!"

Iroa continued to sputter some more but I at least had the courtesy to ease up on him some that he would be able to sit up on his own couch instead of being placed in a humiliating position like the one I had started him out with. I still stood at an uncomfortable proximity to him, body tensed like I could pounce on him at any moment.

The quarian, my step-father, raised his hands defensively, his eyes pleading to understand this newfound aggression from me.

"I…" he said lamely, "I don't know how you could ask that from me. I _told_ you before, right? I told you that I have no power over what Eyzn says and does."

In a fury, I shot my fist out and it plunged straight through the weak material of the wall inches away from Iroa's head. The man flinched away with a yelp as there was a crunch of the flimsy surface breaking. Without changing expression, I withdrew my hand, ignoring the tiny spatters of blood that were starting to bead on my skin, the rest of my limb rather undamaged from the blow. I stretched my fingers out menacingly, deriving some pleasure in witnessing Iroa's horrified expression through his eyes.

"You did say that before," I conceded with a grunt. "But you _have_ lied to me in the past. Your reputation precedes you."

Iroa continued to make pleading gestures with his hands. "I swear to you! I have not so much as _seen_ Eyzn since you last talked to me! _Before_ that, even! Why do you find it so hard to believe?"

"Why do I find that hard to believe? Who else besides your daughter and me does he know intimately on board this station? Who has spent the most time with him out of the two of us? Despite your disagreement, why _wouldn't_ Eyzn come to you? I don't like coincidences, Iroa. I don't like knowing that you two have been the closest to each other in months. The both of you cooked up a way to hurt me in the past and I don't think that Eyzn would be stupid enough to let his animosity of you get in the way of his revenge. You can be a valuable asset to him, knowing what you know. So… why has he waited to share his plans with you?"

"I have no idea," Iroa's head gave a minute shake. "You'd have to ask him yourself."

Iroa could not know just how close that stupid comment of his made him get to getting strangled by me. Inflamed, I had to do a ton of mental restraint upon myself to keep from setting at the quarian's throat. I was not able to hide the fact that my face was turning a magnificent shade of purple, though, as Iroa could at least see that I found his suggestions were making everything worse for him.

"You…" I shut my eyes as my raised hand slowly clenched into a fist, "...are not… _helping_. Between you and that step-son of yours, I am being driven completely mad. Iroa, I am literally two seconds away from laying you out right in this room."

Iroa bristled at my words but he was able to sit himself up a bit more, sensing hesitation within me despite my violent demeanor.

"All I can promise you, Sam, is that I have not done anything that could otherwise be used against you. I don't know what you're expecting out of me right now. I have no control over the man. I don't know how to even contact him - C-Sec wiped out all my omni-tool addresses when I was placed under house arrest. If you think I'm lying, I'll willingly show you. You can even get that stupid geth of yours to hack into my tool if you still think that I'm not telling you the truth!"

The quarian was getting more and more indignant as he was allowed to talk, and I was starting to feel that he really was telling the truth. I took a quick glance back at Sagan for verification, but almost instantly realized that I would just be wasting time asking the geth to run a scan. All these theories that I had previously entertained were being blown away like they were made of dust, showing that my futile hope was hastily and ignorantly constructed. Whatever link I had thought existed between Iroa and Eyzn had truly been sheared away long ago, way before I had even entered this room.

All this time… and I still had nothing to show for it.

Disappointed at my failure, I sullenly stood and walked away from the couch, allowing Iroa some room to stretch his limbs and to not feel any more fear from my close proximity.

"You can't think of any solutions, huh?" I asked out loud. "You really don't know how I can find him, do you?"

Iroa narrowed his eyes at me as he rubbed at his wrists, ironing out the kinks that I had previously inflicted on him.

"If we're being honest with each other, I don't," Iroa said. "But even if I did, do you think that I would give you information that would help you kill Eyzn? That is what you said that you wanted to do to him, yes? It may be different for you, Sam, but I don't know if I could condemn family like that. No matter what he's threatened to do to you."

I gave a scowl as I folded my arms over my chest. "That's a pathetic excuse, and a weakness in your race if that's true. What is really preventing you from turning against your family, knowing that they're trying to do others harm? If Eyzn was a serial rapist or a terrorist threatening to drop an asteroid on a planet, would you really defend him then? If you did know something about Eyzn, why would you not give him up while, in contrast, your daughter pushed me away for something that I did on accident?"

There was an obvious silence.

Iroa noticeably faltered, his eyes desperately scanning the room like he was trying to search for a pre-planned script with an automatic and vague response to my questions, but the quarian dipped his head shamefully. Capitulation. I had him there.

"In fact," I continued, "it might actually _be_ in your best interest if you were to simply let Eyzn have his way with me, right? With me out of the picture, that would be a pretty big thorn removed from your life, wouldn't it?"

I crept over to the man and bent my knees so that my face was about a foot away from the man's rose-colored visor.

"You…" I softly breathed, "...why don't you just admit that you hate me?"

The man made a gulping noise, his eyes fogged with confusion. Iroa's hands shook and he muttered something unintelligible to my sneering face.

"You _want_ me to suffer, don't you?" I persisted in my pressing.

Still Iroa remained silent, but his refusal (or inability) to speak was doing all the talking for me. Yet, I did not want to give Iroa the impression that he was the one in control of our discussion.

" _Speak_ , damn you!" I suddenly roared, my voice shaking the tiny apartment.

Iroa jumped at the same time a ribbon of azure light from the window, crept in from a wafting advertisement, slid across the man's form, briefly wrapping him in the cool color. A low bass thrum sounded from the crowd outside while my outline became enveloped in a halo of light, a result of the outside illumination throwing itself against my back.

I waited, with clenched teeth, for the quarian to make a sound.

For the longest time, Iroa refused to utter a syllable, not knowing if he would get a glimpse of hell if he were to say the wrong thing.

But that tiny speck of courage that exists in all of us chose this time to shine within Iroa, and the man took in a labored breath, his gaze scraping along the floor in anticipation.

"It's something that I have been pondering for months, Sam," Iroa spoke laboriously, but with such a dry confidence that immediately reminded him of the first time we had met, "and I know that I'm not going to be able to change your mind with how you feel about me. But I want you to know that, if the opportunity ever came to me where I would be able to talk to my daughter again without her hating me, and with the knowledge that you were the only obstacle in my path, I would pull the trigger on you myself."

Now the bloated silence was on my end as I was left to stare at Iroa blankly, with nothing less than anger and disappointment radiating from the sad look that had befallen upon me. Iroa's look was also tinged with regret, but there was no mistaking the intent behind his words - he truly had meant what he said.

No lies between us, as I had wanted.

Heart in my throat, I could only muster a solemn shake of my head.

"You… fucking coward," I rasped, raking each syllable out painfully.

I wanted to beat him. I wanted to thrash this man, crush his bones, break his spirit. I wanted Iroa to crumble to dust in my very hands, but as much as that inclination begged me to submit to my baser instincts, I found myself unable to. I looked down at my aching palms, finding that the stiffened joints creaked agonizingly with an invisible prescience, ready to lash out at a moment's notice.

Sensing my desire, Iroa steadied himself upon the couch, mustering up his bravery for his confronter to deal the grievous blow. His body, taut as a wire, trembled the longer I lingered, seeking to lift the painful impatience of the dawning pain.

But I would end up surprising us both.

Fixating him with a mournful stare, with precious tears in my eyes, I stood up above a startled Iroa and, without another word, hurriedly fled the apartment with Sagan dutifully following, to be swallowed up in the crowd just outside the walkway that led to the shopping avenue below.

Finally alone again after I had departed his presence, Iroa held his head gratefully in his hands as he began to uncontrollably sob. Unbeknownst to me, I may have finally broken the man.

* * *

 _Chandler_ _  
Citadel Wards - Deck 35_

Despite the number of layers he was wearing and the fact that the air temperature was downright pleasant, Chandler could not shake this chill that he had been feeling ever since he had left Sam's ship. The last time he had been feeling this nervous was probably back on Earth, during the war. But even then, he had possessed some sort of idea of how he was going to get out of the fragile situations he had found himself in. What he was about to do next, he had zero experience with.

Heck, he almost wished he was back in the trenches rather than doing this.

It was probably for that reason that he had picked a secluded corner of the wards to squeeze himself into, trying to limit the number of people within earshot in case he somehow managed to embarrass himself.

"Oh boy, Chandler, this no longer seems like such a good idea," he grumbled out loud as he raised his arm and activated his omni-tool, allowing golden light to warm the surrounding area. "I'm definitely going to go to hell at some point."

Hell might be a definite, actually, because Chandler had made a promise to Sam that he would do his best to make this upcoming conversation happen. If he had to endure a few minutes of awkwardness, then it would be a small price to pay.

He probably shouldn't even be complaining, he reasoned. Look what had happened to Sam. Chandler silently emphasized that he should at least be grateful that his own life had not taken such a huge deviation… yet.

Almost machine-like, Chandler dutifully typed in the address of the user he wished to call, radiating tingles responding from the haptic keys of his omni-tool. The call went through without a problem, though it took a little more than ten seconds for the user to pick up, which was a relief. Chandler did consider that she would probably hang up on him entirely, depending on her mood, but thankfully that did not happen.

" _Chandler…_ " the audio was scratchy at first but the human was clearly able to see the crimson visor and the person's suited outline on his image feed. " _Is that you?_ "

He smiled warmly. "Hey, Nya. Yeah, it's me. How are things going with you?"

There was a pause so pregnant that Chandler wondered if his audio had cut out for a second, but that turned out not to be the case.

" _I've… I've honestly been better_ ," she said.

Her voice was still scratchy over the tool, Chandler noted sourly but then realized something. It wasn't the tool. That was what Nya actually sounded like. A person that had been crying for a while would be hoarse as a result and Sam had mentioned that he had left Nya's apartment on very bad terms, so Chandler could assume that Nya had been in a sorry state that had warranted the crying. Confronted with evidence of Sam's cruelty, Chandler silently wondered if he was doing the right thing.

"Yeah," he only replied, doubt beginning to eat away at him. "That's what I've heard."

The expression of Nya's eyes turned even sadder on his feed. " _You've talked to Sam, haven't you? I can… I can tell that this isn't just a social call._ "

Chandler swallowed, now rather uncomfortable and flushed in the face. "I have."

" _Let me guess_ ," Nya took a tortured breath, one that still had a hint of a sob behind it. " _He tried to defend what he did to me. He tried to blame me for 'goading' him into smashing our crib, didn't he?_ "

"Actually," Chandler anxiously rubbed at his shorn hair, trying not to make too much eye contact lest he wither under the quarian's gaze. "That's not what happened at all. He did explain what had gone on between you two but he was really upset at what he did to you. He blamed _himself_ , to be honest."

The quarian gave a ragged combination of a cough and a raspy laugh. " _I wish I could believe you, Chandler. I really do_."

"I'm not joking. He really does want to apologize. He wants you to know that he is sorry for treating you so poorly the last time and that he is really hurting from it."

" _So why didn't he call me himself instead of you having to do his dirty work?_ "

"Because," Chandler scratched more furiously at his head, visibly agitated, "he thought that you would hang up on him the moment he tried calling you."

Nya did not have an answer to that, but merely looked away from the virtual lens in silent agreement, begrudgingly having to admit to herself that hanging up on Sam would have been exactly what she would have done without a moment's hesitation.

"He wants to apologize to you in person," Chandler emphasized. "He made me promise to give you that message. Nya, I swear to you, he's being completely serious. He swears that he will be on his best behavior when he sees you because… well, at least I think that he still has hope."

" _Hmm_ ," Nya only murmured, her eyes still turned away in contemplation. Or was it discomfort? Chandler could not read the visual tics of quarians as well as Sam could and he felt severely disadvantaged at this moment.

"He told me to tell you that, in two days' time, he'll wait for you at your… _'real_ home.' He said that you'd understand the significance of that… even if I don't exactly know what he's referring to."

" _I do_ ," Nya responded, her voice rather distant. " _I know exactly what he means about where he wants to meet._ "

"Can you give me a hint? Because I really think that I should be there when you two-,"

" _That's not really up to me at this point,_ " Nya cut him off abruptly. " _But… thanks for giving me the message. I'll… I'll talk to you later, I guess._ "

Chandler barely had time to call out, "Nya, wait! Does that mean that you are going to be-,"

Too late. The visual feed disappeared with a blip. The connection had been closed.

Left with an empty line on his omni-tool, Chandler shut the device off with a stunned blink. Left all by his lonesome, he steepled his hands together, wondering if he had done something wrong during that call, or if he could have conveyed his message a whole lot better.

He would never discover where the fault lay.

* * *

 _Nya_ _  
Xebron Towers Apartments - 15th Floor_

The giveaway noise of an omni-tool powering down gently resounded throughout the living room as Nya limply laid her arm on her lap, eyes locked onto the window, flitting across the occasional skycar that screamed past her view. There was a low thrum in her ears, a churning sensation in her stomach, and a coarse feeling in her throat brought on from her crying hours ago. Her tears, unable to be dabbed away, had long dried by now, but she still could feel the trails they had made down her cheeks when she had seen the crib her child had once lay in completely destroyed by a rampaging human.

One of the posts of that crib was idly played with in her hands, a dull metallic sheen barely reflecting the overhead light, cool and smooth to the touch. The metal end of the post had been screwed onto a wooden support, of which it had splintered into an angry point when the crib had been smashed. Nya lightly traced a finger over this point, careful not to exert too much pressure lest the wooden spear would puncture her suit. In this environment, in her apartment, a breach would not be so much of a death sentence but merely an annoyance. She was pretty much accustomed to the majority of the contaminants floating around this space anyhow, though she rarely made a habit of venturing outside her suit all that much anymore, despite the low risks.

Perhaps… Nya realized that it hadn't been while her daughter was still alive had she walked around her apartment unmasked. A long time, comparatively speaking. It felt good to breathe fresh air, just once in a while, but she feared that if she did so, she would be exposing herself to more than just germs.

She would be exposing herself to memories. Memories that could destroy her if she was not careful.

In no way was she ready to face that kind of mental assault.

Setting the sheared post gently on the stand next to her cushioned seat, Nya then glanced over to the side, towards the L-shaped couch that sat in front of the holographic fireplace next to the window.

"There you have it," Nya said flatly toward the couch. "You have what you need. Any questions?"

" _Not many,_ " the glowing form of Eyzn said, his voice scratchy yet pleasant, the round Orb in the center of the hologram's chest hovering perfectly in place as it projected the quarian's shape all around it.

Nya narrowed her eyes as she stared at Eyzn's hologram, visibly unnerved from the man's presence, even if he was not truly in the same room with her. The Orb was the only tangible item about the man's shape right now - Eyzn could be on another planet or in the next room, for all she knew. The sinister apparition of the closest thing she had to a brother tapped his fingers together in anticipation, taking delight of the fact that he could carry out this conversation anywhere and at any time he wished.

"I did what you requested of me," Nya growled, her cheeks growing hot. "I want you to leave now."

Eyzn's form raised a taunting finger, pinpricks of light dancing around the digit. " _Not just yet_ ," he simpered. " _You did well to alert me of this conversation that you were having with this man Chandler, but I still need more information because I still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle_."

"You promised that you would leave me alone!" Nya protested, hoping that Eyzn would not detect the desperation in her voice. "You said that you would never bother me again if I gave you-,"

" _-any pertinent information on Sam_ ," Eyzn finished almost lazily. " _Yes, I am aware of our deal, but we're not done by a long shot. If you want me to depart, I need more than what you've simply showed me. You need to tell me exactly what your 'real home' refers to, because Sam will be there, yes? Obviously, this… 'home' is not here on the Citadel, I would assume? No… it's referring to another place. And I'll bet this is a place that holds some sentiment to you both - a place that you can feel secure and comfortable in. Tell me where it is, Nya, and I will leave._ "

Nya's eyes fell upon the broken post and she recalled the mask of hate on Sam's face as he had hurled the crib through the air, tensed muscles on his neck bulging as his mouth hung open in a silent roar.

"You'll just kill him if I tell you," she trailed off.

" _That is not my intent_ ," Eyzn shook his head as the Orb floated closer to Nya, the hologram's footsteps eerily silent. Static coated his visor as he drew closer, rendering his expression to be unreadable. He knelt down beside Nya, who still did not turn to face him. " _But it is not your place to be concerned. You worry for a man who has torn your life apart, who has caused it to deviate in such a way that you are now worse off than when you started. I hold no quarrel with you, Nya, and I do not wish to give you pain. Why would you protect a man who has hurt you more than anyone else ever has? I can help you heal, Nya. I can make the pain stop._ "

"H-How?" Nya whispered, her moistened eyes finally drawn to Eyzn's virtual form.

" _I know what it is that you want most. I can give it to you. All I need is your help, Nya. Tell me what I need to know, and I will do everything in my power to make you… whole again._ "

"You c-can't possibly know what I want."

Eyzn chuckled through a horrid roar of distortion, his hand outstretched. " _Would you like me to prove it? I can keep talking and you can decide for yourself how you want to live your life: filled with joy… or wracked with pain? Do I have your confidence, Nya?_ "

Ordinarily, the odds were astronomical that Nya would have listened this far into this dialogue with Eyzn. Nine times out of ten, she would have immediately disengaged with a prodded fury, stricken with anger and disgust at sharing even a sentence with this man. For when had Eyzn ever done anything to Nya that was good in her life? What had he provided that could be seen as advantageous?

But, as in all encounters that have transpired before in the universe, Nya would learn firsthand that nothing is absolute, that even though the hand you have been dealt might be a winner, it is never bulletproof.

Nya looked at the floor.

Then she looked at the ceiling.

Divining strength, she finally stared straight into Eyzn's veiled eyes, speckled with bits of dusty light as the hologram fizzled just inches in front of her.

"Very well," Nya said through a dry mouth, though there was little indecision plaguing her words. "Keep talking."

* * *

 **A/N: Had to do a lot of perspective jumps here to get a lot of things set up. Hopefully it wasn't too disorienting for you guys.**

 **I'd wager that the next chapter will be completed some time around when _Star Wars_ comes out. I fully expect every one of you to make that a priority over this, so if the chapter is delayed because of _Star Wars_ , I hope it is somewhat understandable.**

 **As always, thank you for the feedback! I greatly appreciate the reception and the constructive pointers that I've received thus far!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Sam's Kitchen Rampage: "Inferno" by Hans Zimmer, Bryce Jacobs, and Mel Wesson from the film _Rush_**

 **Iroa's Admission: "Mogren Radio Outro" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Nya and Eyzn Discuss: "Invaders" by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe from the video game _Crysis 2_**


	11. Chapter 8: Roadside Opposition

_Earth_ _  
Santa Cruz – Just outside Henry Cowell State Park_

This was to be our home, at one time.

I stood in the middle of the living room within the Earth-bound house, staring straight out through the massive piece of glass that served as the door to the balcony that provided an overhang upon which to view the towering firs of the evergreen forest that surrounded the place. The soft, fog-brushed light of the morning was just beginning to scrape by through the sea mist, barely reflecting off of the polished hardwood floor that gave my footfalls a very solid clack to them. The floor loudly creaked whenever I set my weight upon the right spot, but such characteristics were normal for a house like this. There was a sort of welcome imperfection that one got when residing within a house on a planet rather than one of the character-less and sterile-looking apartments back on the Citadel, a fact that I had come to appreciate a whole lot more after spending a long time away from my world.

How I had missed it.

Turning away before the rays of the rising sun could break through the cloudy veil, I slowly trudged through the empty expanse that the house provided. There was no furniture that occupied any space within any of the rooms - nothing to give this place a sense that someone lived here. No one had ever been given the chance though, as this house had remained unoccupied since it had been erected, although that had not been the intention as unfortunate circumstances in the past had caused my plans for this place to change, once things concerning my life had begun to severely devolve.

When Nya had become pregnant with our daughter, we had embarked on a long and serious discussion for how we were going to approach our future together. That included the usual gamut of items such as, talking about family plans for medical insurance, financing our changing lifestyle, tuition for higher education, and so on. One of the topics that we had brought up was the possibility of us moving away from the Citadel as to give our child an upbringing on a planet with atmosphere. It was more of a sentimental and symbolic need from Nya's point of view, rather than a practical one, but I at least understood where she had been going with this. Nya's childhood was either spent on a depressing and derelict colony moon or crammed into a flotilla cruiser with zero privacy to be found amongst her shipmates. Nya wanted her baby to grow up with as normal of a life as possible, to give her the opportunities that she herself had never gotten the chance to experience. With a life on a world like Earth, our child would never want for anything like her mother did - she would know independence and be able to experience the galaxy to the fullest extent.

And she would have known our love.

With such a future being unable to be torn from Nya's mind because it gave her so much hope, it did not take much effort on her part to sway me to her idea, which I had to admit was a very good one. The two of us began researching real estate on Earth for ideas of places to live. Earth was the perfect place because, it had been my home, and in terms of natural beauty, it was Nya's favorite planet that she had visited thus far. The cost of which to move onto Earth was a non-issue for us; we had more than enough money from my job to settle anywhere we pleased. The problem was that most places we found that we thought were appropriate areas had no property being sold at the time, or that some of these homes were positioned in rather ugly parts of the globe, far away from the best natural splendor that had been shaped all through time, barely untouched by man.

But then I had an idea.

If we couldn't buy an existing house… why not _build_ one?

That way, we would not have to worry about scouring the ad pages of the extranet, hoping to find the one house that matched all of our wants and needs in perfect detail. We could simply shape it ourselves and put it wherever we wanted.

If anything, the prospect of building a house had excited Nya even more, if it could be believed. We had hired an architect to create for us a scale model of several houses that would suit our needs. Together, we decided on having such a house be built in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California. Nya had fallen in love with the city when the two of us had visited some months back and it had been the city that I had proposed marriage to her in, so it held some sentimental value for the two of us. We picked out a nice bit of property that was for sale, one that sat on a slope that had a perfect view of the rest of the mountain feeding to the water's edge, with lush and towering pines surrounding the property. It would be hard to imagine a better location.

While our daughter grew within Nya, we had contractors dutifully work on the house while we stayed up in the Citadel. The entire thing had finished construction about a month before our daughter was born, allowing us to take a tour of the premises (though we had to cut it short due to Nya being in the late stages of her pregnancy, which did not afford her to be away from home for very long). The architect had gone for what she had called a "Classical, Neo-Revisionist look," which was basically saying that the house was specifically built with styles greater than a century old. In essence, it looked like a normal house with sampled touches that looked modern by my standards, but suited the period just fine.

Unless I had somehow paid for the Winchester Mystery House, I really doubted that I was going to care how the house was going to turn out, so I was very pleased to find myself enjoying the take on our abode, a sort of mish-mash between Mid-Century Modern rectangular wall panels and Contemporary soft curves to end up in a welcome place to rest my head.

As for the layout of the house, we did not go overboard with the amenities. Two stories, four bedrooms (one could be repurposed as an office), two and a half bathrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a den, a garage, and a balcony for watching the sunsets. Like in our apartment, we had to fit advanced filtration systems so that, if Nya or our daughter ever wanted to remove their helmets to walk in their home unmasked, they would be able to do so. There were no ostentatious displays of wealth that we had added - no hot tub, tennis court, or otherwise gaudy accoutrement that would obviously reveal our wage bracket. If we were eventually going to add more enhancements to this house, it was something that Nya and I had not discussed yet. We would have had plenty of time to hold that conversation, though.

My gentle smile drooping as I slowly dropped back into reality, I continued to wander around the bare dwelling, taking painful note of the fact that I would have moved in here with Nya by now. I could have been living back on Earth, surrounded in this paradise, able to swim in the sea just a few miles away! This should have been my future, yet it was another blank spot in my life, a deviation from a timeline that I did not have the power to alter any further.

Glancing back outside, the light that scraped off the top of the mountains was hitting the mist that floated above the waters of the Pacific, making it seem that the entire ocean was on fire down below. I blinked from the searing view and slowly walked back into the kitchen, my heels gradually plodding from hardwood floor to dark tile. As I entered the room, my eyes naturally found Sagan, who accompanied me all the way from the Citadel, stoic as always. I figured that there would be no harm in bringing him along, knowing that the geth's calm demeanor might give rise to some stability with this fraught encounter looming in the back of my mind.

Before I could utter a word to Sagan, though, the geth suddenly reared his head in the direction of the front door, his flaps around his optics twitching in anticipation.

"Singular vehicle approaching," he announced, the sound of tires upon gravel crackling just a moment later. Indeed, I saw a white-ish object suddenly move into view past the window - a car gently resting to a stop.

My forehead suddenly felt like a furnace while the rest of my body froze to ice. She was here.

To stop myself from wavering horribly on the spot, I moved over to the kitchen counter so that I could lean my body upon it, still facing the direction of the door. My heart thudded against my ribcage, very apparent once I heard the whine of the new vehicle's ion engine being switched off, sending a vacuum spiraling toward my ears. A drone of pressure pressed upon my head and I felt faint and I was barely able to discern the soft footsteps slowly approaching the threshold - the click of heels upon a rock path.

As I tracked the source of the footsteps to the door, there was barely any hesitation from their end as they met the heavy wood face, but there was no chime to indicate that they wished to be let in. Instead, the door merely swung upon on iron latches, with only a timid greasy squeal, as the electronic lock effortlessly slid aside, allowing Nya to step into her home, her eyes blank behind her visor.

No warmth. No compassion.

Only sadness.

I tried my best to put on a sympathetic face, but my jaw was clenched so tightly that I was only radiating my own trepidation and private fears. Breathing out softly from my nose, I slid my palms along the counter, taking more of my weight upon them as I took in every singular detail of Nya's enviro-suit, from the frayed edges of her cardinal fabrics to the dull glint of her metallic clasps.

Nya appraised me hesitantly, like she was debating the merits of lingering or departing altogether. In the end, she decided to hear me out and cautiously approached where I stood, her balled fists hanging at her sides while the front door automatically shut behind her.

In my own inner sanctum of cognition, I was actually glad that Nya was here, although I would never freely admit such a thing to her. I was just relieved that she had understood the message that I had wanted Chandler to deliver, particularly pertaining to the vague hint I had made about "our home," this place that we had built together. For a while I had been wondering if she would not understand the meaning at all, let alone the possibility that she would ignore my invite purely out of spite. Well, such trifles were no longer necessary to dwell upon. Now, I had a new hand to play.

Nya had continued to walk over to the kitchen, but stopped dead-center in the room, just about a meter and a half away from me. Far enough to prevent any warm inclinations from bringing the both of us together in a blind heat. Her head turned in the direction of where Sagan was positioned like a guard dog - taking stock of her surroundings without missing a beat - before she looked back to me, her eyes expectant.

"Is Chandler with you?" I began, my eyes lowering in suspicion while my fingers softly rapped upon the counter.

Not the best way to start out this conversation, I knew, but I found it odd that our friend had not been accompanying Nya when she had walked into this house, seeing as it was from his help that we had managed to bring this thing together.

"No," Nya answered plainly, her shoulders raising slightly in indifference. "Was he supposed to be here?"

My teeth ground together a little more in frustration. " _Yes_ , actually. That was the whole point of him…" I trailed off, knowing that what I was going to complain about would not matter in the long run. "Forget… forget it. I wanted him to be here but it looks like that's not going to happen."

"Well," Nya said with a healthy dose of snark as she placed her hands upon her hips, "he should have indicated it to _me_ that he was going to be here with us. If anything, he probably should have hitched a ride here with _you_."

I narrowed my eyes, knowing that I agreed with what Nya said, but was loathe to acknowledge my acceptance of her logic. So much for Chandler mediating. If only my incompetence and lack of foresight on the manner had not screwed things up so much. Oh well, I guess I now had to fall back on Sagan for any support should I falter here.

Well, this was off to a rousing beginning.

"So," Nya sighed as she now crossed her arms over her chest, eyes slit in a smoldering anger, "what now, Sam? Why am I even here? Why did you invite me to this… place?" She took a long look around the empty foundations of the house. "It's even more miserable since I last saw it."

Fraught with anxiety, I lowered my head for a second before I let my throat take in a rasping breath of cool, mountain air. At the very least, I hoped that I came off as someone who was about to speak with all sincerity, vulnerable and raw in the face of my shame.

"Nya, I…" I took another breath, "I invited you here so that… I could talk with you."

" _Talk?_ " Nya repeated the word, as if she had heard incorrectly. "You just want... to talk? You could have just called me over my omni-tool instead of having me waste my time coming here."

"Here? I would have thought that our home would have as much significance to you as it does for me." I spread my arms wide, indicating the timbered interior. "Does this mean so little to you, what we built together? Do you not think that I had a reason for inviting you here, knowing what this place means? This is a home, a building that we decided upon each and every aspect together. Not just you… or me. _Us_. _Together_. That carries so much weight and I figured that you could not refuse the opportunity to come back here."

Nya scowled behind her clouded covering. "Are you happy that you figured correctly?"

"Nya," I made a bitter face, "it's not about being correct all the time. I'm not looking to one-up you. It's about fairness and meaning in our lives. You know just as well as I do that you would never have agreed to a call over our omni-tools after what happened a couple days ago, nor would you invite me back into our apartment. I chose this place because we both stand on equal ground here. I have nothing to break in front of you in this place."

"Nothing to _destroy_ , you mean," Nya growled as she began to circle around the other side of the counter. "Like you did to the crib?"

I let the silence permeate at the air at that little comment, my face growing hot with disappointment and a deep-rooted anger that was just beginning to fester.

"If we're going to start with that, Nya, then I want you to know that I... am so sorry for that little stunt I pulled with the crib. I know that you can think of several reasons not to forgive me for such a thing but even I cannot fathom how I was able to be so careless like that. What I did was childish, juvenile, and altogether spiteful, and I really do apologize. But-,"

"You smashed one of the few reminders left of _her_ ," Nya seethed.

" _-But_ ," I continued, trying my best to make the tone of my voice as even as possible despite my rapidly building annoyance, "it was not like what I did was as spontaneous as you might imagine. Like it or not, what I did might not have happened if you had not blatantly accused me right to my face… Nya."

Nya shook her head timidly, uncomprehending. "I… I don't think-,"

In a blink-and-miss moment, I rapidly raised my clenched fist into the air so quickly that my limb could have simply appeared into thin air. The gesture had been so abrupt and my face had flashed with such an anger that Nya jumped an inch in the air, completely frightened for a second. I did not care that I had startled her so badly - my entire body itched with the desire to make her pay for all the pain she had caused me these past few months and I was constantly wrestling that immoral and terrible urge back down as hard as I could. But, I did lower my fist as my face relaxed with a tiny groan.

"I do not want you making any excuses this time, Nya," I said lowly, my face contorting into a grimace. "You and I both know what you said to me. Please don't lower my opinion of you any further. You accused me, screamed at my face, that I… _deliberately_ murdered our daughter. Nya… I… for the life of me, I don't know what possessed you to _say_ such a thing. Is that what you really think, that I actually killed her?" I inched sideways along the counter, growing closer and closer to Nya, my eyes now stealing away her accusing glare and using it against her. "Am I truly a murderer in your eyes? Are you going to simply forget all the crap that we've been through together - so many obstacles that would break other people yet we managed to endure? Are you still going to believe that I could do something so heinous?"

I locked my eyes onto Nya's glowing vocabulator in the hopes that it would pulsate as soon as she opened her mouth. But as much as I tried to penetrate the smoky barrier that hid her face from everyone, I could not pry forth her voice after a veil of meekness had suddenly been thrown up around her, completely locking her up in front of me. She seemed to grow smaller in the wake of my interrogation, the sharp logic that I had thrown in her direction.

"Did you forget all that I've promised you in that time?" I continued, an edge creeping into my voice. "Did you think that _I_ would forget? I know I haven't exactly been a paragon of good behavior lately, Nya, but I sure as hell don't think that you seriously believe that I would renege on my vow to be a good father. The fact that you could accuse me… that… that isn't _you_ , Nya."

"Sam…" Nya now struggled to speak, her hands gripping at the counter as her chest took in trembling breaths. "I… I didn't-,"

" _Infanticide_ , Nya!" I sharply uttered, my voice raising a few decibels in volume. "Infanticide! That is what you said I did, didn't you?! Knowingly killing a baby! How could you think that I could do such a thing _intentionally_?! To someone I _loved_?!"

"N-No…" I heard her tremble out.

" _I did not mean to kill her!_ "

"But you _did!_ " Nya finally shrieked, with what must have been a monumental effort. Her fingers were now splayed out upon the counter, all six of them firmly gripping into the granite top like she was about to rip it off in a feat of immense strength.

Surprised at her declaration, I took a step back. "And so…" I breathed, "because I made an accident, it somehow became purposeful in your eyes?"

The quarian mournfully shook her head, now refusing to even look at me, except… for the tiniest glance that managed to peel through the layers of myopia and misunderstanding, a whole new light peering through the darkness. Finally, a crack in her facade had begun to show, allowing me to get a glimpse of the wonderful woman that I had fallen in love with all those years ago.

A lifetime ago.

"N-No… Sam. I…" there was a tiny sob that Nya emitted and she almost unable to continue before she caught herself. "I… I don't know what happened to me."

"Then why did you lie?" I said, my voice gentle once again, all traces of anger wiped from my face.

Nya shuddered as she raised her head, letting me look at her bleary gaze.

"I thought it would make things… easier for me."

"Easier? Easier than what?"

Stepping even closer to Nya, I was now close enough to reach out and touch her. A flitting thought passed through my head and I lifted a hand, intent on gently resting it upon her shoulder. I wanted to feel her limber frame through that suit, to hope that my touch would provide comfort and reassurance.

But when my hand got to within an inch of my wife, she suddenly slapped it away, her distrust and fear taking hold over her once more.

"Don't touch me," she snapped.

Smarting in more than one place, I withdrew the offending limb, my mouth drawn in a frown as I tried to decide where to proceed from here. Instead, I walked around the counter and leaned across it right next to her, biting my lip as I dealt with the internal conflict within myself. I could feel the invisible knife twisting around in my gut, churning my insides as I watched Nya's form hunch over in her misery, simultaneously enraged and afraid in my presence.

"We've always been able to work things out, you and I," I now spoke softly, almost in an intimate whisper. "And you've deserved better than what I've given you in the past. But I can't help you if you don't talk to me, Nya. Tell me what I can do to get things back to the way they were before."

Nya dipped her head. "I don't think you _can_ help me, Sam."

"Fine," I sighed before I let a beat pass between us. "Maybe I can't… but that doesn't mean that you can't help _me_."

The following few seconds showed me at my most helpless and Nya tilted her head over to me, incredulous. I kept my face expressionless - no bullshit from me. I needed direction. I was floating in an ocean without a paddle to steer me. Nya had to know that she was my paddle. I wanted to find this well of poison within my wife - this depression that choked her - and stem it, kill it, burn it from within so that I could crumble away this stranger that stood before me.

Or… she could tear this knife out of my chest, save me from my own demons so that I could live free once more.

The both of us had changed, but it seems like Nya had no idea how far she had shifted along her spectrum. Did she not realize how much of a different person she now appeared to be? For that matter, did I truly understand the nature of my own change?

Nya looked so lost, leaning on that counter. Her eyes could not focus on any one object and I could behold multiple minute movements of her body in several different directions, constantly at war with herself over what she should do next. There was something… off about her. She was volatile, on edge, afraid. Of me? Or something else?

"Sam…" Nya croaked as her head wavered as she briefly looked away. "I… I have…"

Whatever she had to say, it was promptly ignored as my attention was suddenly drawn to the window out front, behind where Nya was looking. For some reason, I had thought I had glimpsed a hint of movement outside, other than the usual rustling of the trees and bushes from the wind. The strange patterns of the light threw the moss-covered ground into disarray, but there was still enough of the sun's rays breaking through the evergreen canopy to indicate certain shapes upon the ground.

Two shapes, in fact. Humanoid. Standing… right outside the window.

The shadows lifted their arms. The outlines of weapons were apparent in their hands.

Assault rifles.

"Goddamn motherfu-," I began to grumble in exasperation.

"Alert!" Sagan blurted a piercing siren, the flaps upon his head exploding outward in panic. "Local perimeter breach!"

" _Down!_ " I screamed as I grabbed Nya's shoulders, paying no heed to her violent protests as I hurled the both of us down to the ground.

Milliseconds later, the windows exploded in a flurry of crystalline and razor-sharp panes as the _ka-thump, ka-thump_ of gunfire blew them out, bits of molten metal now free to careen into the interior of our home.

I hardly noticed the bite of glass granules nipping at the back of my neck, nor of the bruises that I had accumulated from dropping down to the hard floor so quickly. Instead, all my attention was diverted to the rapid crackle of automatic weapon fire (and the groaning of Nya as I partially lay atop her), filling the air with noise and creating mini-shockwaves in my eardrums as the repeated booms layered on top of the other, a vortex of deafening sound.

Nya screamed next to me and the both of us rolled behind the kitchen island, shielded from the direction of the bullets while Sagan darted just out of the line of fire that the windows afforded our attackers. Suddenly remembering that I was armed, I reached into my jacket and fumbled for my pistol, pulling it out awkwardly and taking several times to flick the safety of the damn thing off. Nya did the same next to me, her movements more fluid and instinctive, but her wide eyes were filled with a greater fear than I held within myself.

The repeating crackle of the guns barely let up. Bullets hissed as they rushed by my position. Some of them smacked onto the floor, sending woodchips and dust hurtling into the air. Others blasted into the walls of the house and the counters, sending powerful vibrations trembling through the ground. Rock chipped with a firm splitting noise, sending shards spewing towards my face.

I cursed as a rubbed at my irritated eyes, but my words were swallowed up by the gunfire, throwing my voice into disarray.

The sound of glass being obliterated continued to sound as the bullets tore through what remained of the window out front, not to mention the window that led out towards the balcony as they passed over our position. I could only watch helplessly as the relentless hail of bullets chewed up the walls and the floor of my house, making the entire place a pockmarked mess, turned into swiss cheese as more and more bullet holes added themselves to the decor.

Son of a bitch. Who else would be responsible for this but Eyzn? His impatience had certainly grown exponentially in the brief time since we had last spoken.

My fear now being trampled down as I came to the furious realization, once I had time to collect my thoughts, that Eyzn dared to show his hand at this deeply personal place sent my blood into a boil. I took the heat that began to flow through me - let it guide my actions. The inferno shrouded me in a fury, a veil of light and molten armor. Such an impetuousness took hold, enabling me to act in the face of death.

I shouted at Nya to fire back at our attackers as I made the brazen move to sprint from cover to cover, right through the middle of the path where our assailants were firing. As I briefly came into view of the main window, my perception was running at half the normal speed that I could make out vivid details of the quarians that were firing at us.

There were exactly two of them - no more, no less. Quarians, as I had predicted. However, they were both armored with varying shades of gray and white defining their enviro-suits. I did not recognize either of them. However, they seemed to know me plenty as they shifted their aim before I dived behind a nearby wall, continuing to fire white-hot bullets at me, heat and light blazing from their weapons as the recoil shook their frail shoulders. I wrinkled my nose as I smelled a hint of ozone, a scent that accompanied the refreshing odor that wafted in from outside of pine needles and mulch, a rich bouquet that combined the aura of life with the specter of death.

I was about to question out loud to myself how the hell these two could keep up such seemingly infinite fire until there was a noticeable pause from outside, followed by a few sparse Khelish curses.

Their heat sinks had finally been worn out.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, I leaned out from around the corner, tried my best to line my pistol up with the men outside, and gave a firm pull of the trigger.

The loud report from the gun bucked in my hand, nearly deafened me, and caused my fingers to ache - a result of me gripping the weapon too tightly. The shot itself went high as I had most likely jerked the pistol in anticipation of the recoil, but it had the result of making the quarian assailants shriek and duck for cover.

Again I fired and this time I heard the rapid pulsation of a laser rifle join with mine in a deadly cacophony, sending aqua bolts streaming out into the forest and melting the remaining glass panes that sadly hung where the window had once been a complete sheet. Sagan stepped around his corner as well, his Spitfire in his hands as he methodically swept it from side to side, creating a fan of covering fire and preventing the quarians from firing at us again from their position.

Plasma sputtered and smoked as the bolts splattered into the damp and muddy hillside beyond the front porch, creating a harsh burning smell that managed to waft its way indoors. The quarian attackers shouted to themselves, trying to figure out what to do in the wake of them being outgunned at this moment. Either they were trying to create the idea of a bluff to me or Eyzn really had only sent two poor saps to try and take me out.

But… how did he even know that I would be here in the first place?

That could be answered later, because I stood with a grimace, slamming my pistol into a more stable two-handed grip. I pulled the trigger in three-second intervals, trying to see if my bullets could penetrate the lower windowsill and maybe catch one of these bastards in the side of the head. I stayed behind cover just in case my foes would try something more brazen.

Then I looked over and saw Nya still hunkered behind the island, her weapon clutched in her hands, but she stared into space as though as the markings of PTSD were already starting to encroach upon her soul.

"Nya!" I called furiously. "Help us out here!"

But she didn't, even as Sagan and I kept firing back through the window. The quarians had not peeked up their heads in that time, fearful that our combined fire could blow their heads off if we were accurate enough (or, in my case, lucky enough). I yawed my jaw in response to the repeated booms from all of our weapons, hearing the approaching dull ring of tinnitus threaten to drown out my life.

The hatch on the side of my Carnifex flicked open as a final glowing hot heat sink was ejected from the chamber. That had been my final clip. I was out of the fight.

Apparently that hardly mattered at this point because I heard a rustling of leaves emit from behind the windowsill, followed by the view of the two quarians booking it up the hill to where they had parked their transport - a four-wheeled cheap sedan. Soundless except for the spinning of tires upon a gravel path, the car quickly sped away with its frightened passengers inside.

I was not about to stay and simply watch these assholes leave. No, I was mad as hell and unwilling to let these idiots get away, not after they had shot at me. Before the quarians had even made it to their car, I was running through the house and shouldering open the door that led to the garage. The automatic light in the cold room flicked on, shining down upon a polished, midnight black sports car. I sped around the back of the car, where chrome lettering upon the rear bumper spelled out "850CSi," and yanked open the driver door. There was another click as I was getting myself buckled in and Sagan awkwardly squeezed himself into the passenger side, his frame barely able to fit in the low clearance the door afforded.

I didn't choose to question the geth's decision for riding with me, although I would have strongly preferred that Nya ride shotgun. Apparently Sagan's sense of duty and devotion to my protection resulted in a necessary desire to attach himself to my side whenever trouble came calling, no matter if sometimes that required some maneuvering into hard-to-reach places. But if Nya was going to be slow on the uptake, then better I at least have someone accompanying me. Sagan would be adequate for the job at hand.

"The fastest avenue of escape is the Highway 1," Sagan's lens cycled and refocused, the geth not bothering to touch his seat belt (not that it could be fitted around his bulky frame). "That is where the seditionists will most likely try to go."

"Yeah, no shit," I grimaced as I grabbed the ignition key from my pocket and turned it once in the slot, creating a roaring thrum that shook the vehicle's chassis as the motor started up. "But I know this area. They don't."

"Would it be prudent of us to wait for Creator McLeod to join us?" Sagan asked right as I disengaged the parking brake.

I shot Sagan a blank look, completely befuddled. I then looked to the back. Yeah… that wasn't going to happen. This was a two-door car, and even though there was technically space in the back to accommodate three more people, legroom was practically nonexistent. Even if I were to wait for Nya to cram herself into this car, it would only waste more time and the quarians would escape, preventing me from at least turning the tables on Eyzn's plans.

"Fuck her," I growled, a bit more harshly than was necessary, but I was too caught up in the moment.

As the garage door began to travel upward, the car's headlights popped up automatically and I engaged the clutch into first gear. A bit too impatient to wait for the garage door to finish opening, I depressed the gas pedal and the car shot itself out of the garage, the roof of the vehicle scraping itself upon the still-moving door, tearing the lower half of the opening off its hinges with a harsh squeal and sending a few sparks flying.

Immediately, I gripped the wheel as a new terror began to flood me, but it was the kind of fear that made me give a shaky laugh of slight apprehension, the kind that one emits when things are toeing the line between being all right and going to hell in a handbasket. It had been a long time since I had driven a car - lately I had more experience flying my own ship than I did driving a car, and I had gotten my driver's license first! As the coupe swerved and squealed along the dirt track leading to the pavement of the main road ahead (no thanks to my less than skilled driving) I was finding that I practically relearning a lot of the basics about driving a car during this critical time, not really the most ideal of moments.

The car had been an accompanied purchase along with the house, a little housewarming present for myself. I had never owned a real "fast" car before in my life, as my last car in my previous life had been only a pathetic hybrid model. By some stroke of luck, I had discovered via the extranet that a local dealer had been selling this particular model in the area for cheap, so I had practically jumped at the chance to purchase it when I had found the ad.

However, there had been a good reason why this car had been sold on the cheap side, I had learned very quickly. There was nothing inherently wrong with the vehicle, per se, as the bodywork and interior were actually all in very good condition. Even the engine ran well. No, the main problem that I had to deal with was that I could not actually drive it, because there were several laws already in place that prevented me from even taking it out onto the road.

Sometime in the middle of the 21st century, there had been a series of environmental edicts that had been passed down amongst the major countries of the planet in an effort to reduce carbon emissions and alleviate the effects of global warming. This had the effect of essentially banning any vehicle that did not get an extremely fuel-efficient gas rating, making alternative-fuel cars the new benchmark for the majority of civilized society. Since the previous owner (or owners) of this coupe had not been too keen to pay for a replacement engine, since the car's original engine had been too fuel-inefficient, it had remained in storage all this time. Considering that this car had been built in the 1990s, the fact that it had been in such good shape when I had bought it had been a testament to the level of care bestowed upon it.

I had the time and patience (not to mention funds) to get the car up to 22nd century standards, which was not an easy process of having the original gasoline engine torn out and replaced with a hydrogen-electric hybrid engine, turning it into a zero-emissions vehicle. Many of the original components had to be replaced due to age, which wasn't easy. Try tracking down car parts that are over 150 years old, it will drive you to the brink of sanity. There were also a bunch of trivial little issues to mend, such as getting the paperwork all sorted out and registering it with the government, but after a few months of having it in the shop, the coupe was ready to go, with a little extra oomph in the engine this time, since it now had the horsepower to match most road-going vehicles today.

That increase in horsepower and torque was the reason why I was trying so hard to get this car under control in the first place. It was incredibly tail-happy and squirreling all over the place, desperate to gain traction. This car, although it looked menacing, was an antique even by my standards. Its electronic steering assists were rudimentary at best and intrusive at the worst. All the dials were analog and I suspected that some of them still were not wound right, not to mention that they were backlit by an ugly shade of burnt orange. The steering was heavier than I was used to and the car itself was disastrously prone to understeer when confronted with tight corners.

But it was fast, which was all that I was asking from it right now.

Feathering the brake as I yanked the wheel to the right, the back of the coupe finally broke out of its understeering rut and got thrown out in a wide arc, causing me to frantically power the wheel back over to the left to prevent me from skidding completely around and stalling out. The winding mountain road was steep and completely beset with conifers on either side, but I was still able to make out the white outline of the fleeing car about a half a mile down the slope, barely discernable through the trees.

"Son of a bitch," I muttered, more out of a need to reassure myself. I depressed the gas pedal further, not content with flooring it just yet, not on this terrain. I did not have full confidence in my driving abilities, but the sad truth was that I was definitely the most experienced out of the trio comprised of Nya, Sagan, and me, as I had enough knowledge about the basics of driving to understand the minutia of keeping a car such as this under control on the road.

The silver lining is that the guys that I was chasing were even worse drivers than I was.

"You need to maintain an average velocity of 65 miles an hour to diminish the distance between our quarry," Sagan reported from his seat.

"No one likes a backseat driver!" I snapped, all my concentration firmly locked on making sure I did not drive off the edge of a mountain.

The dodgy nature of the road was just one out of a myriad of obstacles plaguing my way, as it turned out. I still had to contend with traffic, even on such an out-of-the-way route, and there was only one lane that I had to work with and no designated passing areas. My car looked like an antique junker compared to the present-day models that were currently cruising about, but at least I could still pull a few moves that were up to par with most modern vehicles. With little regard to my personal safety, I weaved in and out of traffic, paying little attention to the painted guidelines on the road, hoping that my actions would not result in a head-on collision or a visit from the cops.

The gambit, repeated several times, appeared to have worked and soon I was a little less than a quarter mile and gaining from my foes. A synthetic roar from the engine was piped in from the car's speakers as I increased its speed now that the road was starting to straighten out. I could even see a few of the neighborhoods down the road a bit since we were heading into town.

 _Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Motherfucker_ , I thought over and over again as I pursued the car with an animalistic thirst. The complete lack of subtlety, deliberately shooting at me in my own home, it was all too much for me to take with a straight face. I wanted these men to pay for terrorizing me. Too bad Eyzn was not here to see it but he would soon realize that screwing around with my life would not be much of a cakewalk as he might have initially believed.

The clustered forests of the mountains were quickly substituted for the tropical flora as befits a beachfront town. Carefully maintained parks scythed clear areas, surrounded by lush palms while the scent of eucalyptus trees reached my nose through the air conditioner. The traffic was picking up here too and I was running out of room to maneuver as I could only watch helplessly as the vehicle that I was chasing made a right at the first turn signal, continuing down the slope towards the coast.

I pulled up my mental map of Santa Cruz and tried to guess the route that these quarians were going to take.

"They're going to go up north towards the bay," I realized, meaning the San Francisco Bay. "There's too much traffic if they try to go south."

Armed with this educated guess, I furiously depressed the brakes and proceeded to poorly drift my way into an adjacent side street that ran parallel to the main road, the one I had seen my quarry disappear down. Now, I was in a charming little seaside neighborhood, the kind of breezy environment that had maintained a polite rebellion against the conformity that technology offered. Santa Cruz had always been a haven for the gregarious and out-of-the-box type of mind, and the quaint construction of the homes and the teeming masses of the front gardens reinforced that stereotype heavily.

No doubt that the idea behind my repurposing of such an old car would be welcomed in this city, but the gregarious of the driving that I was demonstrating right now was not doing me any favors. Going completely from memory, I frantically turned down side street after side street, looking every which way to avoid any potential obstacles that might jump into the road at a moment's notice, trying my damnedest to evade as many obstacles as I could from parked cars to garbage bins.

I had to skirt around some pedestrians after blowing through a stop sign. One of them flipped me off as I roared past (which I very well deserved). As I screamed past a park, a soccer ball gently bounced into the street, the result of a boy's errant kick. I ran the ball over without even touching the brake, making me wince knowing that I had probably ruined a kid's day.

No question that I was being a menace in this neighborhood, as evidenced by my boorish behavior. The tires of the car screeched and whirled as I tried to control the damn thing and prevent myself from smashing into the side of a house. I jerked the wheel this way and that, trying to straighten out the line as I shifted from one gear to the next. At one point, the entire car went airborne for a second, a moment of stomach-churning weightlessness passed until the wheels of the coupe finally touched solid ground with a wrenching smash, sending more sparks from the chassis as it bounced horribly.

As I made the final turn that led to the coastal highway (after smashing a mailbox off its post), I deliberately lifted my foot off the gas, letting gravity do the work as my car coasted down the hill.

Sagan noted the fact that we were not accelerating anymore and turned to look at me. "Samuel, you must maintain maximum speed to decrease pursuing distance."

"I know," I replied through clenched teeth.

"Our velocity is not sufficient to sustain-,"

"I said _I know!_ " I barked back, keeping my hands clenched firmly on the wheel.

I counted down the seconds in my head, trying to conceive of every singular detail that I could account for with regards to driving in Santa Cruz. I timed it all out, making sure that I had not missed a beat, before the lens in my eyes refocused with renewed vigor and I gently pressed on the gas a tad, making the dial on the tachometer rise ever so slightly.

The yellow armored geth in the passenger seat quickly spun his head to the road and back to me, watching the dual-lane highway rapidly approach as the light of the morning sun sprinted onto the sea and the nebulous fog coating it, the golden beach marking the boundary on the other side of the road.

"Samuel…" Sagan began, uncertainty creeping into the geth's voice for the first time.

"Hang on, Sagan," I said as I instinctively tested the buckle that held my body to the seat. "This is going to get bumpy."

And to think… this came very close to the suicidal stunt that I pulled all those years ago. The same bone-headed move that had sent me to this very universe.

Now I was looking _forward_ to such an outcome.

There was little time to blurt out any other warning. At the very moment the hill evened out, I slammed my foot onto the gas, pressing it into the floor as far as it would go. The car lurched like a horse that had been whipped, surging forward towards the traffic light that marked the boundary where the highway could be accessed.

I just hoped that I had timed this right.

The car went airborne for a split second as I hit a bump, and the chassis sent sparks showering onto the pavement as the tortured shock absorbers took the impact handily. If a geth could feel fear, I'd imagine that Sagan would be panicking right about now as I was less than two seconds away from reaching the intersection.

Not to mention that the light was still red, but when was I going to let such trifles stop me when I was in such a bloodlust?

It was too late for me to slow my advance and just before I could get the inclination that I had monumentally fucked up, the blazing white shape of the car that I had been chasing all this time, hurtling down the highway, appeared on my left in my peripheral vision - _perpendicular_ to the direction I was traveling now. I had done it - I had caught them.

But catching them was only the first step of my plan. The next step would be enacted within seconds.

The quarians, unaware that I was not chasing them to their direct rear, did not even see me as my car approached them from the _side_. It had not even occurred to them that I might have utilized other streets to my advantage - the poor saps probably thought that they had managed to lose me. As a result, they were caught completely off guard and never had a chance to react as my coupe roared into the intersection, completely disregarding multiple traffic laws in the process, and bore down on them like a pouncing wildcat.

I would have liked to have seen their faces when the moment of judgement came. It would have given me so much satisfaction to have my superiority validated for this one time.

The front of my car caught the quarians' fleeing vehicle perfectly at the back in a perpendicular strike. Textbook example of a tactical T-bone. There was a terrific sound of metal wrenching and glass shattering, and I found myself thrown against the steering column, saved by the rapid expansion of the airbag as it deployed right into my face. My neck twanged and the breath was powerfully driven from my lungs as the car spun around from the impact. It felt like I had been stabbed in the chest and my eyes instinctively shut in response to the fierce, paralyzing pain. There was a horrible shuddering as all of the car's velocity vanished in a matter of seconds, with some of that energy having been translated upon my body, and the ruined hulk skidded to a stop in the middle of the road.

As quickly as it had started, it was over.

I blinked as I gingerly raised my head from where it rested against the deflating airbag. My chest hurt, as did my back and neck, and I felt nauseous. Something hot and wet was in my eye and I slowly brought my hand up to determine what it was. My first inane thought was that battery acid had somehow splashed into my face from the crash, but my imagination was quickly put to a halt as I realized (strangely, with some relief) that it was only blood. I should have been more worried, considering that my palm was painted completely red, but aside from a minor throbbing on my forehead I did not feel any pain specifically from that cut.

Not saying that I wasn't hurting at the moment. I took a few seconds to cautiously check some of the parts of my body, finding that, miraculously, I had broken no bones in the crash. There was some strain on sensitive areas such as my neck from the whiplash, and my chest was going to have a whopper of a bruise on it from smashing into the airbag, but aside from those things I was otherwise unharmed.

Next to me, Sagan seemed unfazed as his airbag deflated from him. The dashboard was cracked and impacted severely from where the heavy synthetic had smashed against it, as a result of Sagan not wearing a seatbelt. The geth looked perfectly fine, believe it or not. He was designed to withstand orbital drops several hundred miles above the ground - a crash like this probably did not even rate on his scale of severity.

Confirming that point, Sagan analyzed me with his ever-open "eye" and lifted a finger to prod at the cut upon my forehead.

"You are injured, Samuel," he said.

"It's nothing," I panted as I brushed aside the hand, yet I was feeling more of the hot mask of blood as it coated practically half my face. I imagined that I looked quite a fright but I had too much adrenaline in my system to stop and smell the roses.

Sagan then looked down at my torso. "There is a plastic shard lodged in your upper arm. Are you aware of this?"

"Huh?" I said dumbly, around a thick tongue, as I glanced down to where Sagan was looking. Sure enough, there was quite a large piece of the dashboard that had broken off and had impaled through my jacket and skin. I had no idea why I had not felt it, even as the wound wept precious fluids that trickled down my arm.

"I'll be damned," I muttered as I continued to stare at the piece of plastic.

Before Sagan could offer his assistance, I reached up with my other arm and firmly grasped the roughened piece of plastic. I took no stock into the kind of agony that this was going to produce, which was why I was surprised to feel a ripping sensation tear through my arm as I quickly yanked the offending shard out from where it had stuck me, sending up a tiny squirt of blood as it was removed.

 _Jesus Christ, that stung!_

Letting out a high-pitched yelp, I clasped my hand to the wound as I heavily breathed out through my nose. My lungs were labored and one of my eyes was about to be clotted shut from all the blood that ran into it. I shook with an involuntary tremble as sensation rushed back to my limbs once the shock from being in an accident began to wind down, woefully letting agony rush into my realm of awareness.

It took half a minute for me to pry myself out of my coma of pain, once the cut in my arm died down to a low-key throb and I was able to lift my hand away from holding it. Remembering how I got into this situation in the first place, I peered through the shattered remains of my windshield to appraise the devastation that I had been of my own creation.

The front of my car was a lost cause. The hood was all crumpled, the pop-up headlights smashed to bits. The entire engine was a clutter of tangled metal spaghetti and ripped fan belts. Liquid dripped from breached tanks, mixing in a multicolored mess just a few feet in front of the wreck. No question that this thing was un-drivable, completely totaled.

On the other hand, the quarians' car was in far worse shape than mine. Due to the effects of ramming a vehicle at high speeds upon a point of lessened weight distribution, the resulting impact had completely flipped the quarians' car upside down to skid along its roof and come to rest in a ditch at the side of the road. The vehicle's wheels continued to turn helplessly in the air and I saw no one exit from the interior of the wreckage.

"Well," I rasped after emitting a wet cough, staring intensely at the other wreck that I intended to approach. "Might as well see if anyone's still alive in that thing to-,"

I was cut off by the rapidly approaching squeal of tires. Sagan and I turned simultaneously to witness another car barrel down the highway at top speed. Even at this distance, I recognized the outline of the vehicle that Nya had brought to our home, ostensibly a rental. Sagan and I were still in the wreckage of the coupe, frozen in place and not knowing what action to take as Nya's car hurtled down the road, seconds from smashing into the obstacle that we presented.

It seemed like Nya did not manage to spot the accident until she literally had moments to spare. Unaccustomed to driving and panicked at the sight of both cars she had been chasing suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, she pounded on the brake with all her strength, as evidenced by the sudden screech of tires as Nya desperately tried to stop.

Unfortunately, Nya had depressed the brake too firmly and she had been yanking the steering wheel at too hard an angle in an effort to avoid the obstacles on the road. As a result, her brakes locked up and the car's center of gravity caused it to effortlessly flip over on itself, smashing its roof onto the hard ground, then back onto its wheels, then once again onto its roof, and so on.

I could only watch in horror as Nya's car flipped several times down the road, safely passing my position, but the car was disintegrating more and more with each flip. Terrified, heart in my throat, I kicked open my wedged door just in time to see Nya's car flip one more time to rest on its wheels only to roll itself close by the other car driven by the quarians, at the other side of the highway.

"Holy fucking shit," I muttered as I unlatched my seatbelt and stumbled out of the car, willing my trembling legs to get a grip and to support my weight as I limped down the road, towards where Nya's car sadly lay, the other quarians' car put out of my mind for now.

My pace hastened as I followed the trail of paint scrapes along the ground, the glistening remains of windshield glass, and the random scattered part. Behind me, I also heard Sagan extricate himself from the wreckage of what used to be a fully functioning German-built coupe. Nya's own car was also ruined, the entire bodywork was now squashed a little flatter and the suspension had completely collapsed on one side, puncturing the tires and rendering it un-driveable.

Nya had managed to flop out of her car by this point and was now sprawled out on the ground next to it. Hurrying over to her, I felt relief at the fact that, at a glance, her visor was still intact and that there did not seem to be any major breaches to her enviro-suit. I was about to call out to her to see if she was all right until she shakily got to her feet, allowing me to see that her left arm was dangling at her side, useless.

I saw my wife's head shoot up as she saw me headed her way. Immediately, she held up her still functioning arm, her eyes betraying her mistrust and fear.

"Get… get away from me!" she cried out in a half-sob. That arm of hers must be paining her something awful, I realized.

"Let me help you, Nya," I breathed as I skidded to a stop in front of her. "You've dislocated your shoulder. You need-,"

" _Don't touch me!_ " she shrieked as she pressed her back to the ruined car. Her free hand felt alongside the aluminum bodywork and she turned her body perpendicular to it. Nya tensed herself in preparation and I was about to roar out in protest when she suddenly slammed her body intentionally on the side of the car, trying to ram her shoulder back into her socket.

Needless to say, it didn't work.

The bloodcurdling scream that Nya unleashed was powerful enough to make every hair on my body stand on end. Overcome with agony, Nya dropped to her knees, sobbing at she clutched at her ruined shoulder, only having damaged it more from her brazen assault. I turned away with a wince, my bloodstained face screwed up when I had seen Nya try to fix her arm. The hand gripping my lungs relaxed with a sigh and, not entirely of my own accord, I walked over to where Nya was trembling and softly crying to herself, temporarily immobilized with pain.

"Hold on, Nya," I said as I crouched next to her. "You're doing this all wrong."

" _NO!_ " Nya screamed in my ear as her entire body jolted. " _Don't you dare touch me!_ "

I had finally endured enough of her shit, even when she was yelling in pain, to realize that Nya had no clue as to what she was truly saying. She continued protesting, but she did not physically struggle against me, not even after I clamped one hand down on her upper arm and another hand just below her armpit to steady her. I breathed in and out, knowing that this was not the most refined way to fix a shoulder, but it was certainly better than nothing.

"I'm going to be honest," I gritted in preparation. "This is going to hurt like hell."

"Don't even think about-," I heard her say but I disregarded it.

"On the count of three," I said. "One-,"

I then wrenched my arms, taking Nya totally by surprise.

There was a thick _pop_.

Nya howled a long Khelish curse as her socket shifted back into place. The brief scrape of bone along nerves was enough to make her feel that her entire limb was falling off, but the actual discomfort lasted for less than a second, leaving a smoldering sensation along the outside of her shoulder.

I stood back up while Nya continued to clutch at her shoulder, her sobs already beginning to subside as she tenderly tested her range of motion, finding that she was unimpeded, to her relief. It was hard for me to breathe normally, as I was still wound up by all the adrenaline that my system had boosted into my bloodstream. I only had the salty breeze of sea air hurtling against me to cool me down, combined with the faint scent of beach shrubs and spilled hydrogen. I blinked as the random ray of sun tore through the clouds, ripping through the airborne condensation to land directly into my eyes.

"Goddamn," I sighed as I doubled over for some extra air. "I can't figure out how-,"

"Shut up," I heard Nya squeak out, her voice shaking with mixed emotions while she trembled. "Just shut up, Sam. _Shut up_. I don't want to hear you speak to me. Not now. Not ever."

I was unsure of how to take this vitriol from Nya and I faltered in place, confused. "Nya, I don't understand-,"

" _Stop it!_ " Nya shrieked as she jumped to her feet, but she had to steady herself against her wrecked car lest she topple over, her legs not yet ready to take her weight. "Stop pretending that you care, Sam! Why are you even here, you _bosh'tet_?! Why are you still concerning yourself with me?!"

"Because…" I stammered, "...because I _do_ care, Nya."

" _Stop lying to me!_ " Nya screamed as she fiercely threw her hand out and slapped me right on the cheek.

The blow stung, I had to admit, but it was partly because I had not seen it coming. She had struck me quite hard and it had felt like I had just been whipped in the face. Fury bled from Nya's expression as her hand completed its arc and I touched the spot where I had been hit, my fingers still smudged with the blood that had clotted onto my face.

"Nya…" I was on the edge of losing it, which made it all the more imperative that I control my temper right at this moment. "I am not lying to you."

"You're wrong!" Nya cried out. "You hate me!"

Before I could say anything to the contrary, my head was forced back to the side again as Nya slapped me a second time. This one hurt just as much as the first and even some tears wrenched their way out of my eyes, leaving trails through the blood that painted me so.

"Say that you hate me!" Nya snarled.

She slapped me again, forcing me a step back to stumble into the sand on the side of the road. Still I refused to speak.

"Say it!" she screamed again as she delivered another slap, her suited palm dyed red from my blood. It was now streaked across my face, making me look like a hideous clown performer. I pushed through this newfound source of pain, my jaw set and face turned to stone.

Enraged by my defiance, Nya took a large step forward and grabbed a fistful of my shirt to hold me in place, with the arm that I had just repaired, while her other arm was now raised in a fist, shaking heavily as she kept her limb in the air, ready to deal a grievous blow.

" _Why?!_ " she half-screamed, half-sobbed. "Why won't you say that you hate me?!"

"Because I _can't!_ " I roared in her face, noting that my words had the effect of freezing my wife in place. I didn't care about the tears leaving streaks down my face as I tried to wrap my mind around this hateful form that had possessed this woman, trying to figure out where she was going with this. "I _can't_ , Nya!"

"Why… not?!" she mustered through a cracking voice.

" _Because it's not the truth!_ "

I felt Nya's grip on my shirt abruptly slacken, leaving streaks of my blood upon the gray cotton. Her arms fell to her sides, her muscles no longer functioning properly, and she took a few steps back, now appraising me through a glazed expression. I could witness surprise flit across the vague outline of her face, along with confusion and… was that… shame? The whistling of the wind became all that I heard for the next minute as the two of us simply stared at the other upon this godforsaken highway, joined by the enormous roar that the nearby waves provided.

Was my response truly something that Nya had not been expecting? Did she really think that I would acquiesce to her demand or… or did she think that I could easily forget the feelings that I had held for her at one point?

Those same feelings that still resided within me?

I did not speak another word and neither did Nya. Horror gradually encroaching upon her more and more, Nya stared at her hands, filthy with my blood, before lifting her head up to look at me and appraise the visible handprints that adorned my cheeks, the evidence of her abuse. Fear gripped her and sobs began to choke her as she diminished in size before my eyes. I was sure that tears were starting to stream down her face as she realized the extent of how monstrous she had become, but before I could reach out and provide a calming word, Nya, completely beside herself, shook her head and wilted in my presence. Shielding her eyes from my own sad gaze, the quite upset quarian suddenly took off down the road, soft bawls emitting from her vocabulator as she ran.

I did not follow her but instead watched her leave, her outline growing smaller and smaller as she headed back to town, far away from me, ashamed at what she had done. Instead, I straightened out my shirt a bit, fixing some of the wrinkles that Nya had caused before I walked over to the median of the highway, where Sagan had been watching the exchange the entire time.

I tilted my head in the direction of my fleeing wife to the geth. "Go make sure that she gets home okay," I said.

There was a noticeable pause from Sagan as the geth took a moment to appraise my less-than-stellar looking appearance.

"Will you be requiring us to wait for you?" the geth simply replied.

"No, go ahead," I grumbled as my attention was now drawn to the other wrecked car belonging to the quarian assailants, the one that I had t-boned. "I've still got some things to take care of here."

Two things, to be exact. Two individual quarian idiots that were about to reap the consequences of severely trying to fuck with my life.

As the geth jogged down the empty road to catch up with Nya, I headed in the opposite direction, my pistol now in hand as my nostrils flared with each infuriated breath. Stomping towards the overturned car, I was able to perceive that one of the quarians was currently in the process of crawling out from the interior, a rifle pathetically grasped in their hands as they struggled to claw their way across the dry dirt on the side of the road, dead clumps of grass ripped in their fingers as they were desperate to escape.

I reached the man before he had a chance to stand up, the roar of the nearby waves having masked my approach. Before he could raise his weapon, I stamped the heel of my shoe down on his hand very hard and I felt the crunch of bone emit while the quarian cried out suddenly in pain.

"You're not going anywhere," I growled to the man as I knelt down to take his rifle, which had been released from useless fingers after I had shattered several bones in his hand.

The quarian, sapped of all strength, limply tried to dig his still-working hand into the ground for support, but the crash combined with my own dished out abuse prevented him from moving. His enviro-suit was also intact, although several of the fabric trappings around his body had been torn to shreds from being bounced around the interior of the car. The alien continued to sob, his ruined hand responsible for most of his agony, especially since I still continued to grind the appendage into the dirty ground with my shoe.

I checked the rifle to see if it had any thermal clips left in it, which it had, and I pressed the barrel against the side of the quarian's head, my finger inching ever closer to the trigger as sweat began to drip down my forehead in anticipation, rendered frigid from the wind.

"You've got exactly one chance," I whispered to the injured alien, who was still whimpering in agony, fearful of my sadistic nature. "Tell me where to find Eyzn or I swear to god that I'll blow your head off your-,"

I did not get to finish my sentence because there was a sudden rattle of broken glass and a creak of frayed metal that drew my attention towards the other side of the ruined vehicle. I looked up and immediately locked eyes with the other quarian who had been in the car, his eyes frightened behind his gray visor. He held no weapon in his hands, as one was clasped to his side like he had broken a rib in the crash. The alien saw me holding the rifle against his friend's head and, sensing that he was in mortal danger, took a few careful steps backwards before he abruptly turned and rushed up the nearby hill that led into the mountainous forest.

I watched the fleeing quarian hurry up the hill, partially amused at how the tables had turned. I then bent down to the man that I still had trapped under my boot, my finger now lifted away from the trigger.

"Stay here for a minute, will you?" I hissed.

The quarian, confused, tried to rise again but was brought back down after I had slammed the butt of the rifle against the back of his helmeted head with a sickening _crack_. The quarian collapsed, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness as I finally lifted my foot off from his hand, leaving the dazed alien to writhe in place.

"I'll be taking this," I hefted the rifle with a cheeky grin, "if you don't mind."

To emphasize my point, I lifted the gun back up and rested the stock firmly against my shoulder as I took aim at the escaping quarian, who was now halfway up the hill, headed to the border of the woods, trying to hoof it on the very steep terrain. No doubt the quarian, unused to the recreational activity known as hiking, had to be completely exhausted right now. I looked through the scope to make sure that I had eyes on my current target before I jerked my sights to the right by a millimeter and pulled the trigger.

My shoulder comfortably absorbed the recoil of the gun and the actual noise it discharged was actually quite manageable. I was able to witness the quarian's reaction to my bullets being sent in his direction all through the scope, much to my merriment.

I had actually deliberately aimed away from the alien, not content on shooting him just yet, not that I felt that I could given the opportunity, but I wanted the quarian to know that I meant business. The ground of the hillside popped in a three-burst eruption of dirt and grass just in front of the quarian, causing him to drop to his knees in panic, completely alarmed that I was taking potshots at him from the road. With renewed vigor, the threat of being shot now having been given credence, the quarian got back to his knees and took off towards the forest at an even faster pace, his second wind now being chewed up in light of the danger that I now embodied.

" _It's never easy, is it?_ " I grumbled to myself as I slid a fresh clip into the rifle after ejecting the one I had just used up. " _I've got to do everything myself._ "

Leaving the quarian that I had just disabled to roll around in the dirt by the overturned car, I now took off after his cohort, taking the same route up the hill that led into the evergreen woods. It was apparent that the quarian had not exactly thought his escape all the way through. The hillside was steep, with no clear path upward to facilitate a rapid climb, and was covered in patches where only pebbles lay upon bare earth that made the going treacherous. Having lived on this planet in the past, specifically in this area, I had considerable experience traversing up and down steep mountains whereas the quarian, who had probably spent most of their life aboard a flat and sterile ship environment, had zero.

This was like pitting an Olympic sprinter against a middle-school track runner. Absolutely no competition whatsoever.

That being said, it was still a challenge for me to make it up this slanted face, but at least I was able to accomplish it far faster than the quarian had been able to. Breathing heavily, sweat causing my clothing to stick to my skin, I plunged headlong into the forest, right at the spot where I had seen the quarian enter.

The temperature immediately dropped ten degrees as the clustered canopy shielded me from the morning sun. I felt reenergized as my body, overheated from rapidly scaling the hill, was rapidly cooled as if I had stepped into a refrigerator. The soil here was damp and earthy, with a rich scent to it, and completely covered with clover. I carelessly tramped upon the little green seedlings as I stormed through the maze of trees, my feet propelling me over tangled roots and grasping ferns. Fallen twigs snapped and crackled as I trod upon them, ripping away strands of leaves as I relentlessly pursued my quarry.

Gritting my teeth as my mouth filled with thick saliva, I did not let up in my rapid stride, knowing that I was quickly gaining on the quarian, who had to be quite overwhelmed in this foreign environment.

Speaking of which, now that I was inside the forest, I could see the agitated form of the quarian that I was chasing quite easily through the undergrowth, as dense as it was. I was not surprised to see that he was continuing to run instead of hide - when agitated, common sense seems to dry up and be replaced by chemical instinct. While admirable as a defense mechanism, instinct is no match for logic and deduction.

After charging down a young sapling, I stuttered to a halt and lifted the rifle again. I did not bother aiming at the quarian because shooting him was not my intention. Not yet.

A five-round burst from my rifle raked the thick trunk of a sequoia just a few feet away from the running quarian, sending thousands of woodchips and splinters spraying into the air. The quarian yelped at the confirmation that I was hot on his heels and jerked in response to the tree partially exploding next to him, but he kept on running, not wanting to face the hellhound that was nipping at his heels.

The purpose of somewhat-indiscriminately firing at the man was to eventually wear him down with the notion that I could potentially kill him at any time, therefore making him realizing that fleeing was pointless and that he should just turn himself in. Either he was delusional to the point where he genuinely thought he could lose me, or he was just so driven by panic that he could literally not think of anything else except running as fast as possible.

Muttering crazed curses to myself, I picked up the pace and reached the same velocity that I had been running at before, the rifle threatening to slide itself out from my sweaty palms. I bounded over a trickling stream, vaulted over a moss-covered log, and took the rapid changes in elevation in stride, my shoes leaving thick imprints into the mud… right next to the marks the quarian had left in his haste to get away.

This continued for a few more minutes, with me taking the occasional shot at the alien. It irked me greatly that this chase, having started at my home, had not completely ended yet. I was totally fed up and itching for this to come to a close, so when I estimated that I was only ten seconds behind the quarian, I sucked in a tight breath and began to draw on the reserves that I had for my second wind, barreling towards the obviously-fatigued man.

The quarian was in a bad shape, as evidenced by his lagging gait. I could hear his wheezing from here - he was probably a few moments away from collapsing entirely. The quarian species might have been built for endurance at one time, but all those centuries spent aboard those spaceships of theirs had completely trashed their stamina, which was particularly evident now that this man was in an environment with natural, honest-to-god gravity and not artificially generated gravity.

After brushing past a large fern plant, I managed to get a glimpse of a wall of light just a few dozen meters away. A clearing! And the quarian was headed toward it. The fool, that would only mean that there would be less obstructions blocking my line of sight to him.

Heart feeling like it was about to burst, I sprinted the remaining few feet as I covered my face so that I could burst out of the other side of a tall bush with nary a scratch upon my person. Warm sunlight blasted me in the face and I had to shut my eyes so that they could get used to the sudden increase in brightness.

The quarian had finally fallen, exhausted to the point of fainting, as he crawled just past one of the last trees marking the boundary between the clearing and the woods. I slowed to a stop, suddenly cautious, and I held my rifle at the ready near my hip. Tenderly making my way forward one step at a time, I tightened my grip on the gun gradually as I approached the gasping alien, finding some satisfaction in having bested the man in a straight race of endurance. Hell, I was so cocky that I felt I could have kept this up for hours, if need be.

Stomping up to the quarian, imagining that my footfalls were shaking the very earth itself, I savagely kicked out and caught the man on the side, propelling him forward a couple feet. I had delivered the kick so hard that my entire leg shook from the impact. I would have hated to have been on the receiving end of such a blow.

As a result, the quarian screamed as I undoubtedly bruised the area above his ribs from the kick. With the kind of discomfort he had already been feeling in his lungs from the worst workout he's ever had in his life, he probably felt like I had completely ripped open his respiratory system from the strike.

I held no qualms about my sadistic actions upon this… thing. In my mind, I had been given _carte blanche_ to delve out as much pain as I wanted because these idiots had deliberately attempted to kill me… and Nya. They had not hesitated when the time had come for them to make their move, so… why should I?

Why must I be virtuous in the face of such raw hate?

Can I still be a good man even if I feel justified in doing such despicable things?

"Hurts, doesn't it?" I growled as the quarian continued moaning as he clutched at himself. "Huh? Talk to me, you _fuck!_ "

I punctuated the last word with another ferocious kick, this time onto the quarian's other side. A fresh scream split the air and that sound, combined with the cramping in my stomach I had garnered from running so hard, made me feel nauseous enough that I almost threw up.

My weak stomach would have to be dealt with later, for I shoved the barrel of the rifle against the head of the quarian, spittle trailing down my bearded chin as I fought to rein in my inclination to stomp on this alien's head next, to shatter his visor right into his face… just like what had happened to Kraana.

"Don't try to be a hero," I glimpsed my deadly bloodstained face in the terrified quarian's visor, somewhat shocked at my demonic state, but I disregarded it. "Tell me where Eyzn is. If you don't, I will crack your helmet open and leave you here to die on this planet painfully. You won't be able to get to a medbay in time to save yourself from being consumed by a massive allergic reaction. Now…" I pressed the muzzle of the gun harder against the translucent barrier, creating a high-pitched cracking noise from the force that I was exerting as the glassy covering became strained, " _...where… is… Eyzn?_ "

The quarian's eyes grew wider and wider and his breathing only became more frantic. He coughed, at war with himself regarding the decision to speak.

" _Where is he?!_ " I screamed, saliva flying from my mouth.

I then heard a quiet rustle of leaves at my back.

" _Right behind you, tough guy,_ " a quiet voice rasped behind me.

I whirled just in time, heels scraping on dusty ground, only to get a glimpse of a rifle stock headed towards my face right before the heavy weapon slammed into my forehead, having been swung in the air by a blue-suited quarian. I saw a flash of white and then I lost all control of my body completely. The rifle dropped from my limp fingers and my eyes started to roll up into my head. My knees buckled and I collapsed at the armored feet of my foe, lamely watching a pair of three-toed boots that ground golden stalks of grass into the sun-parched dirt that my head now lay upon.

The only word that ran through my head was: _How?_

The wind whistled and grass crunched as I looked up at the sky in a daze. Sure as life, Eyzn towered over me, his eyes positioned in an expression of smugness through that blue threshold. Blood dribbled out of a corner of my mouth and dirt clung to the sticky fluid that still adhered to the side of my face from the cut that I had garnered from the crash.

Had Eyzn been waiting here this entire time? Had I just been led into a trap?

"So predictable," Eyzn shook his head at me, confirming that he had indeed been expecting me. Behind the man, I could hear multiple crackling noises as many figures, appearing as unfocused blobs through my worsening vision, made their way out of the woods, shoving aside leaf-laden branches as they appraised the prey that their master had caught.

Eyzn's army, all assembled and ready to reap the rewards.

They had all been in the forest… every single one of them, this whole time! I had been so focused on catching just one insignificant quarian that I had probably missed the entire platoon's worth of people hunkered down amongst the trees and shrubs, just waiting for me to appear!

They had all been brought here… for me.

I was still monumentally disoriented from Eyzn's blow and I had a raging headache sprout up from my forehead, but I knew that I had to get away from this place, terrified of the pain that Eyzn had in mind for me. That wasn't going to be an option, though. My sense of balance had been completely thrown out of whack, I was unable to pronounce words through thickened lips, and my body was unresponsive to commands my brain threw its way.

In short, I was a mess.

Above me, Eyzn tilted his head as he pondered, uncaring about my feeble attempts to escape.

"Huh, I thought that hit would've knocked you out," he noted out loud. "Your vids are really dishonest about the sort of abuse you humans can take, did you know that?"

Yes, I knew that. No, I didn't care. But alas, Eyzn was not really seeking my opinion on this little tidbit, for he planted a foot on my chest and firmly held me on the ground while my face continued to bleed. In some small way, I wondered if this was retribution for all the pain that I had dished out upon others today.

Eyzn lifted a small device that looked a lot like a pistol and it was hard to imagine that the man was not smiling underneath that visor.

"I'd hold still if I were you," I heard him simper before he leveled the pistol at me and pulled the trigger.

Something impacted me in my chest and I grunted as I felt a tiny puncture spear me upon my chest. I managed to look up just in time to see the small dart embedded into my body, just to the right of my sternum, inject a tiny amount of a clear fluid into my bloodstream.

Something cold reached up into the recesses of my mind as the sedative took hold and yanked me down into blackness.

* * *

 _I saw smoke billow into the air, gray wisps upon a soot-black expanse. I tasted charcoal on my tongue, burnt and sticky. Where I currently was did not seem to have a beginning or an end - it simply existed. A neutral plain where even light seemed to flee for fear of being forgotten._

 _Yet… there was this distant glow about me, one that seemed desperate to break through the gelatinous mass of darkness that crushed me. I looked in all directions for the source, eager to get to the promised warmth until I looked down at myself and realized that I was the one who was creating the light._

 _My entire body, from head to toe, was wrapped in fire._

 _I did not recoil because I did not feel like I was being burned, despite the fact that there were blackened patches upon my person. Flames leapt from my body and sparks snapped whenever I moved a muscle. Cooled areas hardened and turned to stone on various places, only to melt once again from the intense heat that I exuded. Searing magma flowed through this animate body in lieu of blood, a thick ichor that oozed and dripped off my limbs to pool to the ground below. My eyes were glowing coals, the source of the wildfire that had spread throughout my form. I opened my mouth to speak but all that I could emit was a pale, caliginous rasp. I had no vocal cords with which to talk._

 _I raised a hand, noting that it had been shaped into a sort of talon, my nails sharp, blinding points. My joints were more angular and movements acute and precise. My human form had been modified extensively, but whatever changes had occurred were all obscured from this fire that blazed from my skin._

 _A horrid sound, a combination of a puma's scream and wolf's howl, roared from my throat. A defiant declaration. "Let my purpose for taking this form make itself known to me!" was the cry that I envisioned._

 _A challenge then whispered itself to me, a beckoning call._

 _It started with a flitting presence upon my ear, very much as if a fly was dancing around me upon a hot summer's day. Very slowly, I turned my living inferno, spearing light towards the darkness as I moved to behold this new entrance._

 _Shadows danced in a taunting waltz. They wisped and swirled only to form a bipedal form in seconds, just inches away from me. Even as I projected the full strength of a sun, the gloom of the ever-present nightfall was unable to be penetrated, except for the faintest of outlines marking the boundary between where my foe existed and where he did not._

 _An unearthly growl escaped me as I took a swipe at the enemy, but my razor-sharp talons met only thin air. The inhuman outline jumped to the side, breathing a fragile laugh as they darted just out of reach. Again I struck, but failed to make contact. The shadow flew upwards, over my head, and touched an incorporeal finger to my fiery skin, creating a hissing noise and sending forth my first stab of burning pain._

 _My answering yowl guided my next blow and finally, I broke through the intangible barrier. I felt my hand tear into… something, a mass that was neither gaseous nor solid, but was discernible nonetheless. There was a tearing sound and the shadow sprawled to the floor, black tendrils oozing from their form. The same tendrils clung to my red-hot fingers, evidence that I could make this thing bleed. I shook off the strange viscera and bent my knees, eager to pounce again._

 _The shadow now stood, its outline wavering, confused at how I managed to make contact with it. It edged in one direction, before shifting its weight over to the next, uncertain as to what I was going to do._

 _They faltered at the critical moment, hesitation overcoming them as I saw their posture twitch toward my direction._

 _I made my move in that time, catching them off guard._

 _My talons found the shadow's neck and clenched firmly over it in a tight, two-handed grip. The shadow desperately tried to pull me off, but this time, as it started to pull my wrists away with its "hands," it jerked its limbs back as soon as they made contact with my blazing skin, uttering a whistling cry as if it had been severely burned._

 _I twisted my body so that I now had the shadow flat on its back, all the while I continued to strangle it. Inky trails trickled through my fingers and my nails sank deeper and deeper into a slick and soupy mass. The flames traveling up my back grew higher and higher, and a lick of a blue flare escaped my mouth as I erupted in a piercing roar, right into the thing's face._

 _The shadow struggled, silently begging me for mercy._

 _I was not a merciful demon._

 _It could have been hours for all I knew as I knelt there beside the shadow's body while I choked the life from it. I did not release my hands from its neck for a while, not after its legs had ceased its feeble kicks, not after it stopped its futile attempts to pry my hands away, not after I no longer felt a thin bleeding of whatever air it breathed fail to escape its lungs. It was only after my talons finally cramped and my muscles screamed in protest did I finally let go, my glowing hands lathered in a thick, black substance._

 _I stared at the material that dripped off the smoldering appendage that was my hand, puzzled. I was not short of breath, nor was I feeling particularly remorseful._

 _What could this mean? I wondered as I stared down at the shadow's corpse. Was there any point to this senseless violence?_

 _Then I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I locked up in a panic, noting that this person was also not pained from touching pure fire. Dreading what I might see, I slowly looked up at the man who now stood over me._

 _Tall. Suited. Blue accents and visor._

 _Eyzn._

" _Thought you'd won, didn't you?" he whispered as he knelt down to my ear. "You wanted your enemy to be me, yes?"_

 _I screamed my unintelligible reply at him, too shocked and devastated to rise up and kill him as he stood, even though he had dared to touch me._

" _Not just yet," the quarian waggled a finger before he gestured to where the shadow lay, fully knowing my murderous desire. "Look at where your wrath was directed."_

 _I felt seared and all too aware of the roasting sound that emanated from my person as I, against my will, followed the trajectory that Eyzn's hand offered. As my gaze fell upon the corpse of the beast that I had slew, the shadowy membrane suddenly began to bubble and froth before melting away, leaving behind a new body in its place, still very much dead… but so familiar to me._

 _As I beheld the slackened expression through the crimson color of the quarian's visor and the splayed posture that I had left them in with their neck torn open, their body stained with the blood that I had caused them to spill, I began to scream in horror, in denial, cursing my very hands for tearing out the throat of my wife who lay dead at my feet._

" _Nya!" I wanted to cry out, but my parched throat refused to voice the word._

 _Eyes sizzling from the tears that could not be spilled, I raised a talon into the air before turning it onto myself and plunged it into my chest. With a yowling howl, right when my fingers found the object I sought, I yanked my arm free with a cracking noise and ripped out my heart._

* * *

" _Rise and shine_ ," a deep voice croaked into my realm of hearing. Tired eyelids struggled to open, only finding white light shining straight into my retinas. I groaned as I squeezed my eyes shut, twin stabs of pain shooting through my eyeballs.

A hand touched my cheek, wrapped in the familiar rubbery material of an enviro-suit. It took me a while to rearrange my thoughts, which had all been jumbled around after being placed into a chemical stasis (which was why there was an annoying itch on my chest right now), but I was able to piece together the narrative of events that led me to discern that it was Eyzn who was the one touching me right now.

I opened my eyes, armed with that estimate, and found it confirmed when I saw that familiar electric-blue tint of his visor.

A growl rolled through my throat, a reflex response, and I hurled my limbs towards his throat… only to be cut short by _something_ that had been enclosed about my wrists. I then noticed that I was held in place, my arms spread out to the side and my feet bound together, by a shimmering purple barrier emitted from a hovering drone just overhead. Anchored to the ground, I could only move my eyeballs as long as I remained underneath the drone's emitter.

How long had I been here? Hours? Days? Had I not been unconscious, my internal clock could have given me a rough estimate, but as it stood I had no earthly idea of the concept of time.

There was not much for me to see. I could tell that I was placed within a container that had clear walls made out of some plastic alloy and that the room that lay beyond was glimmering with a snow-white color, shining from the floor and the walls. A warehouse of sorts? Hard to say at this point. I could only tell what was in front of me, and that just so happened to be public enemy number one: Eyzn himself.

"'And furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed,'" Eyzn whispered in a grand tone. "'Its foundations razed to the ground, its lands salted, its entire existence to be forgotten.'"

The quarian looked rather proud of himself and I hoped that my disinterested expression would sting him a little.

"You humans have a fascinating history," Eyzn said as he stepped closer to me, still held in place from the purple barrier. "Very colorful and varied but a lot more… fractious than our own. I found that particular quote a while back and, I have to say, it has intrigued me ever since. Some ancient senator of yours - _oh, what was the name of the place he hailed from, Greece?_ \- made a habit of ending each and every one of his speeches with that very line. Very stubborn, that man. He must have had quite the grievance with this… Carthage. No doubt, considering that he constantly called for the destruction of such a major city-,"

"Roman," I muttered, able to move my jaw a tad despite the veil that had been placed over it.

Eyzn gave a start, miffed. "What was that?"

" _Roman_. Not Greek. The senator hailed from Rome. His name was Cato."

"That hardly matters," Eyzn huffed with a dismissive shake of his head. "The nationality of the person who said the quote is unimportant."

I made a quiet choking sound, my neck raising holy hell from not being able to move. "Some may disagree with you, but I'm not really in the mood to trade philosophical barbs with you right now. Where the hell am I?"

"Oh Sam," Eyzn chuckled as he gently laid a hand upon my head. If I could flinch away from his soft touch, I certainly would have done so by now. "I'm afraid that you're going to have to be left in the dark for the time being… metaphorically speaking."

"Got tired of waiting for me, eh? You wanted to skip all the foreplay and cut right to the abduction, is that it? Or… do you just get off on tying me up all the time? What, is your sex life so boring that you're testing your experimentation out on me?"

I knew that my repeated jabs would have no effect on Eyzn, but it certainly felt good just to voice them out loud. At the very least, the quarian laughed in my face, an ugly sound coming from his damaged throat.

"I should have known that you'd continue to be your testy self, even after all this," Eyzn said. "But… alas, Sam… I think that, given time, _I'll_ be the only one laughing among us. You see, I'm not playing around anymore. We've moved onto the more permanent stage of our relationship. This is going to be your new home for as long as I will it, most likely for the rest of your natural life. I've already gone to the trouble of filling this place with potential stock to bolster my own forces, so it's not like you're the first to be thrown in here. You'll meet them soon enough, once you adjust to the initial isolation."

"So… what?" my face blanked in confusion. "I'm now your captive? This is some sort of prison?"

The quarian shrugged. "Of sorts. I guess it is very similar. It used to be a fabrication plant for a large manufacturing firm and real estate was so cheap in this location that I got it at a bargain to do whatever I pleased with it. All I had to do was clear out the excess storage and pretty soon I had this whole place to put anything I wanted in it. Soon after, I figured that I might use it to store any… undesirables I might encounter from time to time. I've actually taken to calling this place the Shed as of late. Whether we're on the Citadel, on Earth, Rannoch, Palaven, Sur'Kesh, or any random planet in the galaxy is anyone's guess. The Shed is where you're going to be spending the rest of your days, but don't worry, I've gone to the trouble to providing you with the most basic of amenities so that you don't feel too oppressed all the time."

In spite of myself, I grinned. "You're all heart, Eyzn."

"Oh, have no fear. I've come up with several ways on how to torment you here. Rest assured, I'm going to drive you mad from this point forward. We're going to have all the time afforded to us as I pry forth your deepest fears and your worst nightmares. I'm going to make your life hell, Sam. Believe that."

I could definitely believe it and through it all I could not stop myself from thinking of the rage that Eyzn could level upon Nya if he ever got his hands on her. Was she safe? Did she make it back all right?

No longer could I run from Eyzn anymore. He had finally gotten the drop on me, perhaps for the last time. In some sense, it was a relief because I did not have to look over my shoulder anymore, worried that my enemy would be lurking around every corner. On the other hand, I was now forcibly brought closer to this man where he would now be in control of every single aspect of my life. I was _his_ now, and I feared for any unexpected torments that Eyzn could potentially conjure up to manipulate me with.

Could things possibly get any worse for me?

Still struggling against the restrictive barrier, I grunted as my muscles began to cramp from being trussed up in such a demeaning position.

"So… what happens now?" I asked, praying that Nya could at least be spared this sort of fate.

"Now?" Eyzn spread his arms with a dry chortle. "You begin the rest of your life."

"Going to at least provide me with a hint at the kind of crap you have prepared for me?"

"The most that I'm willing to give away, aside from what I've already done, are that the methods that I'm considering of utilizing on you are… for lack of a better word, more _brutal_. After that whole drug fiasco over on Rannoch, I'm done with these elaborate schemes when it is so much simpler, not to mention more effective, to delve out pain on a physical and mental level without having to resort to chemical additives."

"My sanity thanks you for that," I gritted and I meant it. Pain, I figured that I could probably handle. As long as I would not be subject to another one of those trippy, PCP-induced comas again, I guessed that I might just be able to keep a hold on my will long enough to withstand Eyzn's torture… up to a point. I just had to prevent myself as much as possible from being worn down… otherwise I will have truly lost.

"Believe me, I could always do worse," Eyzn taunted as he pointed a finger at me. "You're lucky, you know."

"And why's that?"

"Because I've looked to more of your history for examples of the kind of interrogation tactics that your people utilized at certain points in time. Never could I have believed of the horrors that humans were capable of inflicting. The stuff I've read - wow, I just… it's beyond stuff that even I would do, Sam."

Eyzn straightened up and gently rested his body against the clear wall, his eyes locked on me the entire time. "You humans had this place on Earth called… Guan-ta-na-mo Bay, I believe. There have been extensive research papers documenting the kind of crap that went on down there. A lot of the detainees there suffered abuse such as sleep deprivation where the jailers blasted a theme to a kids' vid into their cells at full volume, which would probably drive _anyone_ insane within five minutes, to be honest. The soldiers also liked to lower the temperature in the cells before throwing water onto the prisoners, and that's just the prelude to the waterboarding, which sounds rather awful. They would even force the prisoners to stand for the anthem of the country they fought against and to salute the same flag under the threat of being beaten. Heh, when this place was home to terrorists that had committed crimes against the home country, the soldiers would play footage of the tragedy that they had committed for them during every waking hour. They would even tape pictures of the victims of these terrorist attacks to the prisoners' bodies to humiliate them, now isn't that just sick?"

If Eyzn was waiting for an answer, he didn't acknowledge his desire as he stood from the wall and began to slowly walk back in front of me.

"The most notable recounting that I read was of this one horrifying, but frankly fantastic, tactic in this prison. Apparently, many of these so-called terrorists belonged to a sect of a religion that didn't exactly hold females in the highest regard. So most of these guys considered it an insult whenever they would be interrogated by a female, as the idea of a woman in power was particularly mind-boggling to these people. Anyway, these female guards had a tactic that was particularly outrageous. They would walk into the cell, loudly declare that they were menstruating, slip their hand into their pants, and let the detainees see the blood on their fingers. It wasn't actual blood, of course, but a red liquid covertly inserted into the interior of their pants to make it look like blood. The prisoners didn't know that, though, so they would scream at the top of their lungs when the guards would proceed to smear the fake blood onto their face. They would scream and scream until their voice gave out because the prisoners now believed that they had been desecrated, as their religion dictated. If that isn't the cruelest, most amazing punishment ever dreamt up, then I don't know what else could top that."

The quarian folded his arms in a smug fashion. "Of course, those kinds of tactics probably won't work on you, Sam. You're not limited by a restrictive splinter of a religion, so I won't be able to exploit that fact. No, going back to basics is probably what's going to get through to you. But just in case it doesn't, I hope you now know that I have a wealth of material to reference in case I don't make any progress breaking you."

"Thank god for that," I blurted out, arrogant and fed up. "I thought that you were telling me that tale as a way for you to indicate that _you_ were on your period or something."

Eyzn didn't take too kindly to my little jest, as he quickly pulled out a combat knife and laid it gently against the left side of my neck. My eye twitched and I gave out a little sigh as the cold metal kissed my warm flesh and threatened to dig in deeply with a fine edge.

"I've put up with your banter for this long," Eyzn warned as he pressed the knife in a little harder, "but not for much longer."

"Like I care about your feelings," I mustered through narrowing eyes.

"You should be a little more respectful. You're in no position to be dictating our conversations."

"I don't have to listen to your bullshit."

"So defiant," Eyzn sighed as he gently lifted the knife away from my neck after savoring a moment of silence. "I'll enjoy the moment when you finally beg me to kill you."

"It certainly is more enjoyable than you'd expect," I said after a withering laugh, the bluff fueling my arrogance. "Killing people, I mean. After all, I... _relished_ the moment when I kicked your mother's visor right into her dumb fucking head!"

But I had finally gone too far. Eyzn brought the knife to my neck once again, and this time his eyes now spat the same amount of anger and hatred that I had seen my own wife give me earlier today. I felt a twinge of fear at seeing the true demon that had been locked behind Eyzn's cocky facade, now that he truly had the power to mold me however he wished.

I was about to realize that I had been in graver danger than I had led myself to believe.

"Do you know what your problem is, Sam?" the quarian softly spoke.

Involuntarily trembling from the knife at my throat, I lidded my gaze up at my tormentor. "What's that?"

"Simple," Eyzn breathed. "You have no imagination."

Then Eyzn sliced his hand across.

There was no sound as the knife tore through flesh and muscle. I felt the cold line of steel suddenly rake across my skin before that line turned hot as my nerves were suddenly exposed to air. That feeling quickly turned to panic as I felt a huge torrent of blood gush from the opening in my throat, spewed from a slit artery that painted the side of the cube that enclosed me completely red, turning the material opaque.

I watched my own blood spurt away from me, too startled to cry out. Hot red liquid continued to cascade forth, showering me in it and soaking my skin and clothes. Already my limbs felt cold and clammy, chilled from the rush of precious blood leaving my body. The drone's barrier that had continued to hold me suddenly deactivated with a zap and I unexpectedly fell forward onto the freezing ground of the container, twitching helplessly and subject to watch as my slashed throat bled my life all around me, the wound itself now too agonizing to comprehend.

As I closed my eyes, imagining that I was in the process of dying, my thoughts carried me back to more peaceful moments of my life, the kind where I could look fondly upon and not care about the dread and the woe that would eventually pounce onto me.

I could imagine those private moments that I had shared with Nya for many a night, the kind where we would shed our coverings and be together with each other, naked and alone. I recalled the sensation of her lips upon mine as we connected for a deep kiss, strings of drool trailing between us as we repeatedly moved together, drunken on our sloppy lovemaking and our desire to-

Now there was a new blast of heat upon my neck.

Sensation shot back into my body, sending fire screaming through my veins. I groaned as my muscles tightened and my back spasmed, shaking me from my fantasy while my vision now inexplicably began to clear.

Apart from the horrifyingly large pool of blood that I was now lying in, I could make out a new individual kneeling next to me, their expression hollow and remorseless as they pressed their blue-scaled fingers to the gash at my neck, a thick substance smeared upon their hands. I felt the cool, gummy material stick to my skin before it abruptly warmed, making it feel like the deep tear was knitting itself back together, fiery-red needlepoints stitching me up in rapid fashion.

Ah, I recognized the telltale sensation of medi-gel. Eyzn didn't want me dead just yet. Why else would he have his asari bitch - Sievra, I was able to recall her name - patch me up before I expired? As my wound continued to clot, hard scar tissue knotting over the healing area, I dared not make a sound lest the very act of speaking would rip open my neck once more. My eyes found Sievra's but she made a point to look away from me. No, she was not sympathetic to my plight. She was simply carrying out her orders. Nothing more, nothing less. If only I knew why an asari would help a maniac like Eyzn… somehow I figured that I would never know the answer.

Despite the terrible wound, I was still alive, a fact that I was thankful for as I took in a wild gasp, the scent of my blood filling my nostrils as I lay in it, soaked in the crimson liquid, its iron scent strangling my nostrils. My limbs still felt numb from the blood loss and my head swam in a sea of confusion. The uncomfortable feeling of blood spurting from a slit throat had vanished by now, but I was all too aware of the acute pumping of the artery within my neck through glistening cords of muscle, a thick and hearty beat as it fought to distribute more blood to my body.

I tried to call out the name of the person I wanted, but my voice failed me and fierce tears of denial angrily sprang up upon me, mixing with my bloodied face as I groaned upon the floor. My fingers grasped at nothing upon the wet steel floor, leaving reddened streaks as I limply felt for purchase, past the uncaring form of Sievra as she looked upon me with mild amusement.

No doubt the limply flopping form of a human who just had his neck sliced open was entertaining to behold, I sourly noted. I made a note to kill that asari quite violently if I was ever given the perfect opportunity.

There was a high-pitched squeal as Eyzn turned his heels upon the blood-stained ground and walked away from where I lay after sheathing his knife, bored with the day's events. He left blotchy red footprints on the floor as he departed, having stood in the pool of my blood, and he tilted his head backwards right before he walked out of sight into the depths of the Shed, a slight sashay to his gait.

"You still have so much to learn, Sam," was his final taunt before I finally passed out, completely exhausted.

* * *

 **A/N: And here I thought this chapter would be a slim one, based on my outline. Now look. This has set a record for me as the longest chapter I've ever posted. Either that means that I'm a very poor guesser at how long I initially think these chapters are going to run, or I'm putting too much stuff into these submissions. In any case, I hope you've enjoyed the ride so far!**

 **Also, I'd like to give a big thank you to the people who leave reviews for this story - they really do make a difference for me and it makes my day to see that someone took the time to drop a comment, be it praise or constructive criticism. I hope that you keep it up, you have no idea just how happy they make this author feel!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Husband and Wife, Home Again: "Xibalba" by Clint Mansell from the film _The Fountain_. (Seriously, if you love experimental orchestral/electronic hybrid scores oozing with emotion, this is the score to check out.)**

 **Quarian Shootout At House: "That Cop Stole My Car" by Elliot Goldenthal from the film _S.W.A.T._**

 **Beemer Chase/Crash: "Situation Critical" by Derek Duke from the video game _Overwatch_.**

 **Sam's Forest Pursuit/Demonic Dream: "Run Londinium" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_. (Probably the most kinetic track released in all of 2017 - give this one a listen, it's insane.)**

 **Diatribe (Eyzn's Theme): "I Am Skull Face" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**


	12. Chapter 9: Ahto Da'var

And so… my confinement began.

Over the years, despite the number of twists and turns that I've been subject to, I believed that I could at least say with a fair degree of certainty that I have been able to maintain a positive outlook for just about the majority of my life. Bear in mind that this was taking into account the intense moments of dourness that had befallen me, like going through the death of my sister, the unexpected displacement into another universe, and having my own daughter die. Even with all those major events weighted against me… and I could still say that my existence meant something in the end.

But sooner or later… I knew that there was going to come a time when my core beliefs were to be greatly challenged in a moment of intense self-reflection and repentance. A time for when I was to step up to my ultimate place, ready to judge myself on my own worthiness.

This was that time.

My actions from this point forward would define my character forevermore.

 _Welcome to hell, Sam._

In the moments right after Eyzn had slashed my throat wide open and left me to writhe around in my own blood back near my original containment cell, I had been quickly patched up and thrown into a white-colored room with no furniture and no one else to share my misery with, despite the room being large enough to comfortably fit a hundred people or so. The gash at my throat, clotted over by Sievra's application of medi-gel, ached something fierce - it literally felt like a line of fire had ignited all along my skin, leaving the surrounding area raised and reddened. Tenderly, I touched my fingers to the scabbing wound, feeling hard scar tissue already begin to burgeon under the skin. Thank god, I would not die here today. Medi-gel was an amazing invention, capable of stemming life-threatening wounds in seconds and accelerating the body's healing processes but the material was not so proficient as to prevent scars from forming. I was going to learn to appreciate that I would be able to walk away with only scars in the coming days.

This would be a theme that would be repeated time and again for me for a while.

Eyzn had deposited me into this room, while I was twitching and shuddering in light of being horrifically wounded, to mull over the day's events while he probably went off to relax somewhere, the swine. I could only muster enough strength to shuffle into a corner and fume to myself, my hands constantly prodding at the scar on my neck to make sure that it was healing properly. All I wanted to do since that terrible moment when I had felt my skin part with a hideous hissing of metal rendering flesh was to sleep, having become rather woozy from all the blood that I had lost. Severed arteries were not an injury to discount, and even though I had been saved from an ignominious death by modern medicine, I was severely mentally affected from all the blood that I had spilled, to the point where I was teetering on the verge of shock, and my body was suffering the consequences.

I developed a chill in no time. This would be manageable to me if I had some blankets to curl up under, but I found that the amenities provided to me were pathetically limited. All I had to wear in this place was a black tank top and some soft pants of the same color. I have no idea how I had received those clothes, honestly. Best guess, someone had changed me when I had been knocked unconscious while being put into this prison, the Shed.

At the very least, sleep thankfully came easily for me, despite the fact that I was in a bad way. My body would replenish the blood that I had lost, I knew, but it was going to take a fair amount of time to get back the quantity that Eyzn had taken from me. There had been quite a lot of blood that had been spilled from the wide gash in my neck - a literal torrent that had coated a wide amount of floor. I worried about developing a fever if my chill was allowed to fester, grimly noting to myself that getting sick in this place would be a death sentence, considering the poor conditions.

Right before I closed my eyes for my first night of sleep, all I could hope was that I would have the strength to open them again to see the next day.

One can only imagine my relief when I did wake hours later.

Thankfully, a fever had not taken hold of me in that time and a lot of the dizziness had worn off by now, leaving me to take stock of my surroundings in the Shed. There wasn't much to behold. Aside from the fact that this room was shaped like a perfect cube, floored in uncomfortable white tile, and walled with a white-painted cement mixture, this room was completely unremarkable. On certain occasions, though, I could hear muffled voices uttering from beyond the walls in a heightened mumble, which told me a few things: that these walls were thin and therefore allowed sound through easily, and that Eyzn's comment about there being other captives in the Shed was in fact the truth.

I wondered if I would be able to meet these "others" in time. My natural curious appetite hungered for stimulation, especially while confined in such a boring atmosphere.

Even more so, I worried if Nya was one of the prisoners that Eyzn had in his clutches.

There was little I could do about my predicament, let alone Nya's (if she even was in danger). After shakily getting to my feet and examining every inch of the room that it afforded, I had come to the obvious conclusion that there was no way out of this room other than the door from which I had been shoved into. This place was blank, featureless, and provided no way for me to fixate my concentration upon a singular point, which meant that mental fatigue could set in very quickly while residing in this room.

Boredom represented the largest obstacle for me to overcome. Although I prided myself on having a very accurate internal clock as I could easily discern the appropriate times for me to eat and sleep based on the minute signals my body gave to me, time seemed to drag to a crawl in my brain. Trapped in this room, with no access to the extranet or any other natural sights such as the sky that might otherwise provide hints to the actual time, my body chemistry soon got all out of whack. My stomach constantly grumbled – meals of tubed gruel were served on a seemingly irregular basis, shoved unceremoniously through the door. The always-on light fixtures threw off my inclination to sleep during night hours. I was undergoing a slow torture of the mind here. Humans were social creatures in that they had an instinct to remain near other people. Forcibly separated from anyone in this place merely heightened my misery as I inwardly drew myself into a cocoon of introversion, beginning to be driven mad from solitude.

Weeks might have passed for all I knew. In reality, it might have only been a couple of days until the next moment I could look upon a living being, but it's really hard to perceive time normally when you're confined in a constant environment. The mind does not like to remain static and starts inventing new realities to keep itself dynamic, to prevent stagnation from encroaching upon the gray matter. That, of course, would give rise to hallucinations, which was an aspect that I was desperate to stave off for as long as possible. I had endured enough of those as it was.

After a while, though, I had finally approached one of my breaking points. Since I had not seen anyone in what I assumed was days, I had gotten so antsy and impatient that I was willing to be a little more brazen in my maneuvers. Not like I had anything better to do, mind you.

Knowing that Eyzn would not have left me in this room to rot unless he had a means to monitor me via a hidden camera or something to that effect, I started to pace around the room, pounding upon the walls with my fists and screaming to see the bastard at the top of my lungs.

" _EYZN!_ " I bellowed as I raised my hands to the ceiling, imagining that my fingers could grasp thin air and yank the quarian down to my level. "EYZN! Come in here and deal with me like a man, you coward! If you're going to kill me, at least look me in the eye when you do it!"

I kept this up for a while, only raising my volume to the highest extent in intermittent intervals to save my voice and also to prevent any damage from occurring to my throat. I screamed the man's name, calling him every bad word in the book, taunting his appearance and even his manhood. I ran around the room, trying to dredge his presence forth by being as obnoxious as possible, uncaring at how crazed I looked in my cell.

I did not care that I was practically inviting more pain onto me. I just wanted to see someone… even if it had to be this idiot's smirking, suited mug. If I could just goad him out, I could make him lose himself in anger. He could get sloppy in the face of my abrasive attitude. I could summon up a fighting chance if Eyzn were to come in here.

Another hour passed of me throwing a temper tantrum, relegated to now kicking at the door in annoyance. I was about to give up and started to walk back towards the center of the room in a darkened mood, when I heard the quiet hiss of the door opening behind me, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand upright in anticipation.

"Well, it's about fucking time-," I snarled, only to cut myself short in surprise.

Instead of Eyzn casually sauntering past the threshold that was my only route out of here, a taller armored form had to duck down slightly before they could straighten back up to their full height once they cleared the doorway, a trio of red optics sending searing light in my direction.

I immediately recognized the geth prime that was under Eyzn's control, the one that he had unimaginatively dubbed to be "Geth." My heart continued to sink lower and lower as the prime took long plodding steps in my direction, its torso centered perfectly in place as it approached my position.

"Oh… great," I grumbled, my face rapidly falling. " _You're_ the welcome wagon, I take it?"

The prime did not utter a response, not that it needed to, and very quickly it bounded the last few steps to set itself upon me.

What happened next occurred way too fast for me to comprehend at first. All I knew was that I felt several blows of pain begin to form on my torso before my shoulder was suddenly twisted in an iron grip, a synthetic arm upon my wrist.

I then heard a _snap_.

Seconds later, I was left groaning on the ground, cradling a broken arm, while the prime casually walked back from whence it came, the door slamming itself shut behind it to leave me all alone again. Just me, drooling all over the floor, my arm numb and unresponsive, occasionally sending shards of agony splicing into my flesh whenever my bone shifted weirdly.

This was the routine that I was facing for the indefinite future, as it turned out.

Eyzn _was_ watching me rather closely, I had learned, and he did not want me either killed outright or so badly broken that I was unable to discern fiction from reality anymore. Any wounds that I would garner from Eyzn's interrogations or from the beatings at the hands of the prime would be reminders of the horrors that had locked themselves into this place with me. I would be left to simmer with the cuts or the broken bones that I had collected during my time here, to be rendered comatose while I squirmed in pain, and hours later some quarian would walk in through the door and apply medi-gel to my injuries so that by the next day I would be all back to normal, ready to face another round of torture, just with a few more scars adorning my body.

The largest scar, the one at my neck, was the one that I always found myself considering in my private moments. My fingers lightly traced the long knob of marbled flesh, a raised line that traveled the side of my throat. A reminder that Eyzn had the power to kill me at any time, but that he deliberately did not succumb to such an inclination, no matter how much he hated me. This was all a show of power to him, to prove to me that he was better in every aspect, that I would be throwing myself upon his feet, begging for clemency, for mercy, for death. If I continued to deny him… my punishment would merely continue.

Alas, I knew as I savored a biting grin, Eyzn could never surpass the kind of punishment I've already endured… at Nya's hands.

* * *

Eventually, after a considerable amount of time had passed, I was finally pried from the room that had been my entire existence only to be herded through a series of corridors until I was forced into a much larger room the size of a convention center, left to fend on my own devices.

The first thing I noticed, apart from the sheer volume of the room, was the fact that I was not alone in this place anymore. Strewn about the large expanse was a thinned-out crowd of multi-colored enviro-suits, all scattered and downtrodden as they sat by themselves, forgotten by the outside galaxy. None of them looked up at me as I entered, even after I had quickly determined that I was the only human inside this room, to my complete lack of surprise. At least now I could have my first glimpse at the other people in the Shed that Eyzn had hinted at before, proving that he had been telling the truth on that particular tidbit.

I took a mental count of the number of quarians but soon abandoned it after I reached about a hundred individuals or so. Rather self-conscious, I quietly stuffed my hands in my pockets as I began to walk the boundary of the room, keeping my head turned towards the center while I pondered to myself. So many quarians, all of them young adults. I then rubbed my bearded chin, agonizing over the implications. This… were all of these men part of Eyzn's little cadre? No, it did not seem to be that way. These quarians were not adorned with the more medieval style armor that the guards patrolling the catwalks above possessed. They seemed rather destitute - languishing at their poor fortunes. If anything, these guys were being guarded in here _with_ me.

So, did that mean that all of these quarians were young adults that Eyzn had kidnapped, to be an eventual part of the horde he was building up? Had this sinister plot been ongoing the entire time that he had been plotting my revenge? What was the motive? All of this couldn't be on my behalf - I was already Eyzn's prisoner! Why continue to hold all these men captive after I had been captured? It made no sense, not to mention I did not have the faintest idea of how Eyzn had managed to somehow find a way to get so many quarians to join his side and share in his point of view.

So many questions, so few answers to glean.

Now I understood why Eyzn had allowed me to be in the vicinity of his newfound prospects. He wanted me to see the extent of his madness, his meticulous planning. By showing me the breadth of his vision, he would sow confusion and trepidation upon me, clouding my mind and rendering me vulnerable to his mental whims.

 _Then this is where it all starts_ , I thought to myself. _Everyone here… they're all going to be subject to the same tortures that have flayed me. The quarians up top - the guards - they were the ones who could not withstand the agony. They gave away their will to serve another._

Making a solemn promise to myself, I vowed that Eyzn would never hear me utter a word for mercy, even if I were to perish from my stubbornness.

If only to make it back to her.

As I continued to pace around the room, working out the kinks in my legs through a firm exercise, I noted that I was drawing closer to some sort of scuffle that was occurring between two quarians near the wall. I could only hear a few muted curses and some cries for help, but even as I approached the fight, no one else turned an eye over to their brawling comrades. They did not even bother to glance over in their direction, completely uncaring.

My first instinct was to put on a stiff upper lip and simply pass the fighters by, reminding myself that it was not in my place to interfere. After all, there very well might have been a good reason for these two young men to start brawling in the middle of this room. Yet… there still existed a flitter of hesitation in the back of my mind. That damned magnanimous urge.

Why ignore them? Why let these two duke it out in front of you?

Why, indeed.

Being controlled more from intrusiveness rather than my usual rabid curiosity, I gritted my teeth with a sigh as I slightly changed my course to head straight-on for the two quarians, who were now rolling on the ground in a tangled heap. It was now clear that the quarian who was on top was the chief aggressor, demonstrated by the fact that he was clumsily whaling onto the man he had pinned against the ground with all his strength. Frustrated at the demonstration of superiority, my pace quickened into a brisk walk as I approached the attacking alien from behind, knuckles cracking as my fists clenched.

Now, the best thing to do in this situation would be to figure out a way to disengage the attacking man off of the other man in a careful fashion and not abruptly, so as not to cause undue damage from such heavy-handed movements, especially since I would be interrupting a fierce fight with heated emotions on either side.

Too bad I was a clumsy oaf.

Instead, once the quarians were within arm's reach, I bent down and grabbed a fistful of the tubes that snaked into the back of the aggressive quarian's helmet, the same ones that provided his precious sterile air, and violently yanked back with a grunt. The quarian flew off of the man that he had been straddling just a moment ago like he was lifted into the air by a cable. I then him flung onto the ground with an almost dismissive gesture, creating a harsh thud. The victim gasped as the pressure of his assailant lifted off his chest and he shakily got to his feet before he sprinted away in a panic, desperate to get away from the prospect of more beatings.

I paid the fleeing quarian no mind. My attention was on the alien that I had just subdued. This quarian, still on his back, was blinking up towards the ceiling in surprise, a pain in his neck beginning to twinge from being so brutally thrown. I did not think that I had done any permanent damage to the man - he just looked to be stunned.

With a start, realizing what had happened, he suddenly leapt to his feet, eyes locked in an infuriated position as he started to move towards me.

" _Ry vraan d'kast, bosh'tet!_ " the man cried out before he hurled a fist in my direction.

For some reason, I don't know why, I made no move to dodge the blow. Was it because I felt in that brief moment a sense of invulnerability? Adrenaline makes people do stupid things sometimes. It made no difference either way because my instinct was correct. Because the quarian had thrown his fist forward so clumsily, his knuckles only grazed my arm, even when I was standing still - a ginormous target. To add insult to non-injury, the punch itself felt more like a slap than an actual hit, which only bolstered my mental image of being immaculate and immortal.

Rolling my eyes, I planted a palm firmly across the quarian's chest. "Sit the fuck down," I commanded before I pushed the alien back down again, causing him to land firmly on his rump. The quarian hissed and rubbed at the affected area, but some of the fight had left him after being humiliated.

"Why did you interfere, you bastard?" the quarian snarled as he looked up at me, a towering giant in comparison to his cowed form.

A very good question, but he did not need to understand my reasoning. Better to let my true motives remain a mystery to these people to keep myself unpredictable.

"Why were _you_ beating up that man?" I countered, my mouth a firm line.

"I don't have to explain myself to you!"

Using my own strategies against me, eh? Fine, I can play this game.

I cracked my knuckles menacingly, making sure to tense my muscles so that the quarian could see the strength disparity between us. He would soon realize that I might just have the ability to tear his head clean from his shoulders if I did not like how he kept up his attitude.

"Then I'll continue to interfere," I shrugged, letting my violent inclinations remain subtle for now.

After being subjugated to Eyzn's wrath over and over again, a fight against this man would merely be practice, a cakewalk. If this quarian were stupid enough to put up a fight, I daresay that I would at least savor the fact that it was going to take place on even ground and that I was given a definite chance instead of being trussed up and prodded at. Although, based on what I had already demonstrated, I was very confident that if things were to escalate between me and this man that it would wind up very badly for the quarian.

The quarian seemed to consider this fact at the same time I was and he deflated with a sigh of frustration, having come to his senses.

"What did the other guy do to deserve your anger?" I continued, genuinely interested as I too slowly dropped my destructive act.

The alien just looked away, almost as if he was embarrassed.

"Something trivial, I take it?" I deducted. "Was it really worth fighting over?"

"Why would you care?" the quarian scowled, reflecting the question that I had been hanging over my own head, coincidentally. "If you were made a prisoner against your will after so long, _you'd_ want to fight anyone in your way!"

I lowered my eyes, not impressed with the quarian's logic. "So… you're fighting the people in the exact same situation as you instead of the ones that put you in this hellhole?"

The quarian gave a start, his expression probably akin to the one Neanderthals made when they first discovered fire.

Disappointed, I shook my head as I backed away a step. "If you're going to fight the only people in this place that can be sympathetic to your plight, then you're as much of a lost cause than the people responsible for throwing you in here with me."

A moment of magnanimity enveloping me, I knelt down and extended a supporting hand for the quarian to take. "Your anger is meant for someone else."

My hand hung in mid-air for a few seconds as the quarian appraised the offered limb. After debating the merits on how to proceed, the alien cautiously accepted the hand and clasped his own three-fingered limb to mine. I helped him to his feet, a fuzzy glow beginning to radiate from me as I fought to keep my own smug smile locked firmly down.

The quarian brushed himself off for a bit and checked to see if there was any damage to his suit before he assessed me in a new light, his anger all but forgotten now.

"Who _are_ you?" he breathed.

I shrugged. "I don't know. You tell me."

"Aside from the obvious?" the man asked after his gaze swept across the rest of the prisoners thoughtfully. "You… _protect_ people? Is _that_ what you've delegated yourself to be? Are you here to keep our gaze focused on the end goal?"

I smirked at the faint praise but shook my head firmly. "I'd say that I simply despise stupid conflicts. I would rather see that everyone here fights for the right side than tear at each other's throats in an effort to keep their head above the waves. Is that so naive?"

"Possibly," the quarian admitted as he clutched a hand to his side. "I can't tell if you've gone mad or are just too stubborn for your own good. You're going to have your work cut out if you mean to keep everyone in line here."

"No one told me it was going to be easy. Besides, I've heard it's good to have a hobby."

"Then I wish you luck, _Ahto Da'var._ "

"Hold it," I grabbed the quarian's arm as he started to walk away from me. I felt the alien stiffen in my grip, unsure if what he said to me was somehow incorrect. "'Ahto Da'var.' What's that mean?"

The alien's glowing eyes blinked once and he stutter-stepped to redistribute his weight. "It's… it's an old phrase once used in our spiritual texts. Seemed appropriate given your… alien nature. It means, " _Our guiding armor_.'"

This time, I could not stop the chuckle from working its way out of my throat, but I did release my hold on the quarian, allowing him to proceed freely.

"Does it _look_ like I'm wearing any armor to you?" I croaked through a cheeky and unconvinced grin.

"Not all armor is visible, you know," the man simply said as he finally walked off, his posture considerably more relaxed after all the aggression had finally evaporated in his system.

As I watched the quarian depart, the final vestiges of my anxiety escaped in a sigh, much like the air being let out of a balloon. A small victory today, but even the small victories could make a big difference. My hands unclenched, I having unconsciously balled them into fists not too long ago.

The alien was right, as I caught myself scanning the room for irregularities, that I was looking to keep everyone in line here. The people in this place needed to focus on the one bastard that had caused their predicament to occur in the first place: Eyzn. They needed to see him as the enemy and not each other. If they could only find the strength within themselves to see that blindingly obvious fact, perhaps they could help me find a way to survive.

But right now, I conceded as I examined the fingernail marks that I had left in my palms, I would just have to settle for what little influence I currently wielded. Who knows, I might even be able to build something out of it - a new person, my own armor to protect me from Eyzn.

"Ahto Da'var," I repeated as my hands clenched together again, tendons shaking as they strained from the effort. "Not bad."

* * *

Months Spent in Confinement: 1

Suspended once more within the purple barrier emitted by the overhead drone, I shivered as I felt a warm and sticky sensation coat my arms. I clenched my eyes shut, knowing what I would see if I were to open them again, pushing my entire consciousness away from the pain the cuts on my skin emitted, away from the perception I got from blood trickling down my body - my blood.

I tried to get my breathing under control in deep, effortful pushes, but it was a challenge to do so as I began to hyperventilate once more as I felt the chilling press of metal mush blood against whatever skin was unmarred from the blade of the knife. I trembled underneath the frigid presence, preparing myself for the next slice that was going to occur in mere moments. I could take the pain at this point, but it did not mean that it did not hurt.

And sure enough, it hurt when I felt the knife part my flesh just above the shoulder - a deep, welling cut that offered fresh blood profusely. I hated the sensation of the rush of my lifeblood gave as it bubbled from the new wound, sluicing down my spread-out arms to stain the floor below me.

But I did not cry out. I did not beg for mercy.

And it angered the man in front of me.

"How long have we been at this, Sam?" Eyzn sighed as he twirled his blood-stained knife between dexterous fingers. "An hour? Two? You know that the punishment will only get worse the more you deny me, so why not give in right now?"

It took everything I had not to spit out a curse into Eyzn's face.

Now Eyzn held his blade in a backhanded grip as he slowly brought the precarious point closer to my eye. I could feel my sclera tremble as I desperately tried to focus on the deadly instrument millimeters away from scraping along my precious eye.

"Have you not considered that I've been going easy on you so far?" Eyzn panted, fighting his own urge to follow through with his threat and be rid of me once and for all. "I've gone to the trouble of patching you up after each of our sessions because I want to face you when you're fresh for our next meeting, but maybe that is all about to change. I could put out your eye right here, leave you partially blinded. Or… I could go a step further. I could cut off your limbs and attach flash-cloned ones in their place. _Rapidly_ flash-cloned limbs. You know how that works, yes? All I have to do is sit back and watch while the enzymes and proteins break down in your cloned limbs, leaving you in massive pain while you rot before your eyes. After all, flash-cloning is not meant as a permanent replacement for the real thing. The rule of thumb with cloning is: the quicker it's grown, the quicker it dies."

Eyzn continued to rant and rave, detailing more and more ways on how he could possibly torture me while I was actually in the middle of tuning him out. The quarian waved his knife around his head animatedly in an effort to prop himself up into a fearsome creature in my eyes. In the end he gave up trying to intimidate me and instead passed the time by carving a couple lines into my bare chest, leaving me to deal once more with the blade.

Even as blood painted my torso, I still did not scream.

* * *

Months Spent in Confinement: 1.5

The heavy weights rattled as I silently hefted them one at a time, the muscles in my biceps screaming bloody murder right about now, but I powered through the sensation, my teeth fighting not to shatter from the force my clamped jaw was imparting on them. I counted out the number of reps I felt I had left to go, ignoring the fact that my arms felt like they were about to give out at any second, repeatedly telling myself that I was doing this as a means to survive, to keep up my strength in a realm of despair.

More importantly, I at least had an activity that I could focus on.

Honestly, I had no idea why Eyzn had gone to the trouble of installing an exercise station and a rack of free weights here in the main hall of the prison. My best guess was that, when Eyzn had been researching up on human prisons, he had noted the fact that all of them had included exercise equipment as a means of keeping the prison populace busy and, seeking to emulate that atmosphere entirely, he had brought in the weights without going into any further consideration as to why he needed to have it.

It was not like the weights themselves were a popular mainstay when I had arrived. All the time I had been here, I had seen zero quarians go and utilize the offered equipment. Either the quarians had no use for exercising in their society or they genuinely had no idea how to operate any of the weights. At least that I would have no competition when trying to use any of them for myself, meaning that I would altogether avoid that cliché of having to fight over the right to utilize the weights, like it was reflected time after time in the movies.

It was unclear to me if Eyzn actually realized that he had unintentionally provided me with a valuable resource in these weights, but I was damn sure going to utilize this gift to the fullest extent.

Depending on how I felt, I could make a workout last for a couple of hours if I drew out my routine. This was critical in staving off the ever-present boredom, which was an actual danger as the lack of stimulation greatly influenced a break in one's sanity. I used the free weights to work several different muscle groups with quiet deliberations: biceps, triceps, and shoulders. The barbell machine was instrumental in working areas upon my chest. Sit-ups helped with my core. Hell, I even took to jogging around the gigantic room to prevent any atrophy from occurring in my quads or thighs, paying no mind to the uncomprehending stares the quarians gave me as I proceeded in my laps.

As a result, I actually gained a bunch of weight in muscle mass over the weeks and, combined with the reduced-calorie diet that I had been forcibly put under, a bunch of slightly flabby areas on my body quickly vanished and were replaced with hard and tight sinew. I probably had less than 10% body fat upon my person after working this routine for a while and I felt better than ever. Stronger, too. The more muscle I gained, the more powerful I felt, and the longer I could last against the overbearing cruelty this place exuded.

I wonder if Eyzn even knew that he had made such a critical mistake. The endorphin rush I got from exercising combined with the knowledge that I was slowly but steadily bulking up in power and size kept my spirits up, preventing them from falling completely into anguish. I would not be weakened here - I would put up one hell of a fight against this maniac, now that I had the ability to do so.

I still had several things that I needed to do if I ever got out of here. After removing Eyzn's spinal column from his body, I already had my next item in mind on my wish list.

Get back home. Find Nya. Let her know that I am all right.

And work to fix things between us.

" _Nya…_ " I whispered, feeling fresh spines embed themselves deep within my limbs as my fingers ever so slowly clenched upon themselves. Even as my fist balled, brimming with uncontrollable rage, my fingers still continued to tighten, squeezing every atom of power into the potential force that my limb could possibly draw from thin air.

 _Does she still even care about me?_

In an instant, without any time for rational thought, I dropped the weight that I had still been holding in my right hand, my unburdened limb now free to shoot out and smash firmly against the wall next to me. The impact rattled up my arm and I very minutely winced as my knuckles were mashed against concrete. I had even sworn that there had been a crunching noise.

My eyelids twitched as I slowly pried my hand away from where it hit the wall, leaving a blood splatter in its place, shaped to where my knuckles had struck. Whereas it had taken a lot of effort to ball my hand into a fist, my fingers now refused to open, the ruined bones having shattered my digits into place, paralyzing my appendage.

There was a muted cough behind me, but I rapidly rotated my head to view the source of the noise, my expression drawn in nothing less than pure mania. A gaggle of quarians had been staring at me, having witnessed my own self-implosion when I had dropped the weights and had made a bunch of noise in the process of dealing my self-inflicted injuries. The aliens stared back at me with horror and confusion, and I shot the stare back at them, daring them to judge me and my decisions.

Not breaking eye contact, I slowly began to wrench my fingers back into place with my free hand, fighting every instinct to cry out as my ruined bones were roughly handled. It felt like shards of glass were being shattered under my skin, and the back of my neck quickly grew damp with sweat - evidence that I was in extreme pain.

Nevertheless, the quarians were rather intimidated by this show of force, that I could withstand such tortures, that they all turned away from me as I continued to correct my broken bones, breaking the link first.

Quietly sucking in a silent breath so that I could finally gasp, I slowly sat down upon the bench, wanting so much just to rapidly sink down upon it in relief, but I kept up the facade, knowing that it would keep me alive while my shattered fingers continued to throb.

From wherever his perch was, I knew that Eyzn had to be laughing.

* * *

Months Spent in Confinement: 2.5

"Eyzn," Vahl called as she watched the scene on the monitors, the sickly blue glow warping off her sand-colored visor, "he's at it again."

From the other room, Eyzn uttered a noise of disgust as he rose from his chair and limped over to the security station to stand next to his female quarian companion. Like the rest of the rooms in this place, Eyzn's private rooms in the Shed were rather threadbare. He had done nothing, not even in the areas for where he carried out his amusement, to make it all the more livable. He simply had neither the time nor the focus to dwell on such matters.

Revenge was the only thing he cared about these days, as were the tools he had at his disposal to make sure that it was carried out to the letter.

Grasping at the central chair for support, Eyzn bent down as he brought up the holo-screen of the lone human waving his arms toward the camera. Sam was apparently shouting something, hoping to reach Eyzn directly, but the screen itself was muted and Eyzn did not have the ability to read lips, let alone the human language that was coming out of Sam's mouth. The intent, however, was abundantly clear: the human was trying to taunt him again with his ever-present bravado propping him up despite the danger.

Eyzn shook his head, his eyes glued to the screen. "He is remarkably dense. One would think that, after all this time, he would realize what the outcome is going to amount to by provoking me."

"I still think that you should kill him soon," Vahl scowled as she crossed her arms over her chest. "You're not gaining anything by continuing to let him live."

Eyzn threw out a hand to silence Vahl. "Yet I'll gain very little if I rid myself of him without completely breaking him."

"He doesn't seem remotely _close_ to breaking. Not from my perspective."

"You wouldn't understand," Eyzn muttered as he ruffled his shoulders, still sourly appraising Sam through the screen. "I've yet to run out of methods to try on this pathetic creature. The worst thing that I could do would be to play my hand too early. I have to savor this moment - let it last. Make him feel a brief glimmer of hope before I snuff it out in front of him."

"He doesn't _fear_ you! Can you not see that?!"

The man merely emitted a chuckling rasp. "He doesn't fear me because he think that he has the upper hand. Little does he know that I've been saving up much bigger revelations for him to muse over. He'll break, but not until I show him the extent of his failure."

Eyzn tapped his hands upon the chair's headrest as he continued to ponder the image of Sam marching around the empty room, still continuing to scream to be let at his enemy.

"But it certainly wouldn't do to have him imagine that he can dictate me around my own facility," the quarian snickered as he engaged his omni-tool to draw up a command box. "It's been a while since I've sent a reminder his way. Perhaps after Geth breaks both of his legs, Sam might learn some humility, wouldn't you think?"

"Personally, I doubt it," Vahl said dryly.

The two of them did not speak for the next half hour as they watched the geth prime throw the human from one corner of the room to the next. As much as Eyzn enjoyed the sight of the human completely overpowered by the synthetic, he continued to feel frustration that Sam was not producing the reactions of fear and helplessness that he had originally envisioned. Not even when the prime stomped on Sam's legs, producing earsplitting twin cracks of bone, did the human cry out to the geth for mercy. He just uttered a long roar of defiance to drown out the pain emitted from his ruined legs, his fists erratically beating on the ground, pounding splotches of blood upon the gleaming white surface.

Satisfied, but laced with a slight tinge of disgust, Eyzn recalled Geth back to the main hub, leaving Sam to mull over his injuries and crawl along the ground like an insect. Utterly infuriated with the human's refusal to give in, despite the fact that Eyzn had expected such a reaction, the quarian slammed a fist down onto the security station's control panel, cracking it and sending a brief spurt of sparks streaming down to the ground as a few of the screens flickered with static.

Muttering a curse, Eyzn sank into his seat, his visor masking a dark expression.

"You complete fool, Sam," he whispered so quietly that not even Vahl could hear it.

* * *

Months Spent in Confinement: 3

The metal pressure in my stomach prevented me from taking complete breaths, because every time my lungs expanded it felt like my body was tearing itself apart. I coughed, drawing more pain, and a few drops of blood speckled upon my lips. I tasted iron.

It was hard not to look at the knife that was stuck in my gut as the barrier that Eyzn had enacted forcibly wrenched my neck down so that I could look upon my torso. A thick red trickle dribbled from the gash that the blade had caused, slowly making its way down my abdomen and my thighs. Blood so darkly red it looked almost black. I felt a burning sensation in my stomach. I wondered which of my organs had been ruptured.

Was today the day I finally die?

"No…" the deep croak of Eyzn burst through the nebulous haze my brain had erected, the quarian able to easily follow my train of thought. He kept a tight grip on the knife as he slowly pushed it deeper into my body, sending a ripping pain against the bare nerves that the metal brushed against. "I know this hurts a lot, Sam, but you're wrong if you think that I've gone to all this trouble just to kill you like this. These things take time."

Nearly catatonic with agony, I clenched my eyes shut, keeping my hot tears locked behind the fleshy barrier. A thick trail of drool and blood hung from my lower lip. All of my muscles quivered in place, desperate to be freed from the purple barrier that had been thrown over me.

"Even now," Eyzn noted, "tired and vulnerable like this, you won't beg me for mercy, will you? Maybe physical pain is not the way to go about this. I've razed your skin, broken your bones, pummeled your body, and yet you still maintain your resolve. I should be angry at you, Sam, but I find myself admiring you even more. Your resiliency, your drive."

Eyzn waved a hand and a medical droid floated over, its spindly arms containing a wealth of instruments - delicate arms for stitching, medi-gel injectors - all things that could save my life. But before it could get to work at the horrific gash in my stomach, Eyzn held up a hand, halting it in place.

I grimaced and made a grunting noise at the denial of the precious medi-gel, an instinctive response. Eyzn seemed to enjoy that and he laughed as he leaned in a little closer to my face.

"You know how this is going to end," the quarian whispered to me. "Are you still going to fight with the inevitable upon you?"

Wrenching the corners of my mouth into a crazed grin, it was a struggle to even gather up enough air to make a single sentence.

"Let me loose…" I coughed, "...and let's find out together."

Eyzn gave a tiny huff as he deflated just a smidge. He seemed to be working out which words to say to me next before deciding that it was not worth the effort and that he could not offer anything that would not be repetitive. I had heard everything that he had to say to me by now, I figured. The more times a threat is made, the less the effect it has.

With a smooth motion, Eyzn withdrew the knife from my abdomen and I choked out a groan as it felt like a vacuum had suddenly opened up where my intestine was. The medical droid was now free to float over to me and patch me up, and soon I felt the stinging of a thousand needles as the lacerations in my guts and skin were quickly sewn up. The discomfort faded as the medi-gel injections took hold, leaving me only able to feel a weird sort of tugging on my torso as the droid continue to apply the stitches, stretching my skin in odd ways.

I looked up from where I hung to silently gloat, but Eyzn had already limped away, leaving me to submit to my healing, soaked in my blood and sweat.

* * *

Months Spent in Confinement: 4

Finally finished with recounting my tale to the young quarian who had been seated on the opposite bench from me, his eyes fixated upon my face in rapt wonder, I groaned as I stood up and stretched my legs and walked over to grab at a pair of free weights on the nearby rack, wanting to get my workout in for the day.

His mind trying to wrap around the scope of my story, the young man, Ahrun, also stood to hover next to me, his interest merely piqued after the anecdote had been completed.

"So… that's it?" he implored and I sensed disappointment in him at being treated to nothing less than a cliffhanger.

"That's it," I simply grunted as I started to do bicep curls with the weights, the thick lines of scar tissue stretching solidly against my taut skin.

 _Is it, though?_

 _Why, was he expecting a happy ending? How naive of him - this_ was _the ending._

Even now, in the few days since I had met Ahrun, I was still puzzled at why I had decided to open up to this quarian in particular. Ahrun was a stranger - I hardly knew him. Just goes to show that whenever my magnanimous self occasionally comes out of my shell, in this case when I had to separate some of my fellow captives from ganging up on Ahrun, odd consequences soon follow. Since I had been the only person who had shown him a shred of civility in the Shed, Ahrun now followed me around like a lost kitten, trying to find a place in his new home. At times, I felt like I had to shake him off out of fear that he could get too close to me, to understand me all too well.

Yet, he managed to get through to me. How? Was it because that he was the only quarian in this place, besides Eyzn, that actually made a genial effort to talk to me? Most quarians wanted nothing to do with me and would rather remain apart and let me do my thing while they chatted peacefully to themselves, preferring to avoid the wrath that escaped me once in a while when I felt that tempers were flaring between individuals. Why was it that Ahrun was the only outlier out of everyone in this place?

But like I said before, Ahrun remained. I wonder what he felt he could gain from me, aside from a story or two. What did he really see in me that I could not see in myself?

"But… there's got to be more!" Ahrun said in denial, his hands making wide gestures. "Your history with Eyzn… your wife is still out there… and you've just been sitting here all this time? Waiting for, I don't know, _something_ to happen?"

I let the weights fall carelessly to the floor, the heavy objects in danger of crushing my feet. Ahrun jumped at the clang and most people in the vicinity turned their heads at the loud noise.

"You're generalizing again," I leveled my index finger at the young quarian's chest. "Do you really think, after you've persuaded me to let you hear the entire story, that you'd think that I would, what, do nothing? Reality isn't as simple as you might think. I've done all I can do, pal. The very fact that I'm still alive is my version of a victory - it means that every day Eyzn does not get the satisfaction of being able to stand over my corpse. Save your lofty goals for someone else because I know my limits when I'm in here."

"Even still, you never mentioned if you ever tried to escape this place. Surely… you must have made at least one attempt."

"I've thought about it, but I've never liked the odds. The only doors in this place are guarded by Eyzn's goons, and while they might not be actual soldiers, the fact of the matter is that they have guns and we don't. We'd be torn apart if we tried to force ourselves through that way. And even if we did somehow manage to get our hands on a weapon, look around. This is just a gigantic rectangular room with a series of catwalks positioned just overhead. They have the high ground - multiple vantage points against us on the ground. We'd never overcome Eyzn's numbers."

"They can't cover everything," Ahrun insisted. "I bet that someone has tried to climb the walls to the catwalks above."

I shook my head at that. "No one has because it's impossible. Look at the walls - there are no footholds to hang onto. It's a completely flat surface and a climb of about three stories. I don't know if there's even an exit for us to consider but I can tell you for sure, that it's not going to be from climbing the wall."

With a grim smile, I patted Ahrun's suited shoulder before I bent back down to retrieve the weights that I had dropped.

"Best you keep your optimism down to a minimum, eh? Believe me, I've considered all the avenues of escape in this place and I haven't found one that I'm confident in using. Personally, I doubt that there's a way out of here for us."

"So you're just going to give up?"

"I didn't say that," I muttered as I was about to pick my workout back up, but after I had dealt Ahrun a withering look.

"Then what good is surviving if you're not even going to _try_ to get away?"

"Because," I sighed as I rubbed at my forehead with the back of my wrist, "there _is_ no way out of here."

"Just because _you_ haven't found a way," Ahrun shot back, "doesn't mean that _I_ can't."

I had to give the kid credit for remaining rather assured of the situation, even if he did not fully understand the depths of depravity that Eyzn was willing to sink to. Ahrun had even been subject to only one of Eyzn's crazed beatings thus far and yet he still maintained an air of defiance. One session would not be enough to convince the young quarian just how much of a painful ride he was in for. Granted, Ahrun had not been trapped in the Shed as long as I had, but that was more than could be said for most quarians unfortunate enough to pass this way.

In a sense, I saw a lot of myself in Ahrun - naive, timid, a stranger in a strange land. But… there was also that spark of brazenness, that hidden glimmer of optimism that kept him going. It was how I had survived my initial crossing to this universe and all the trials that I had to overcome from that moment on. Could that mentality be the key to Ahrun's own survival?

"Whatever you say, kid," I smirked, now resuming another set of bicep curls.

"Don't call me 'kid,'" Ahrun protested, but he started to shuffle off, sensing that I'd rather be alone as I worked out (which I very well did).

Just as he was about to traverse out of earshot, the young quarian momentarily turned around to say one last thing to me.

"You know, if I were you, I'd be doing anything I could to get back to _my_ family."

I didn't respond right away and continued to stare at the wall, but my arms now hefted each weight a whole lot slower as the comment hit me, my muscles clenching and pulsating as they were stretched to their limit for even longer than usual. With a gasp, I mechanically bent my elbows until they were straight, aimed downward to save myself from tearing a tendon, a rotating ball of spikes tearing into my throat as I found myself short of breath.

"But you're _not_ me," I retorted in a choked whisper after I sensed that Ahrun was safely away, my arms now holding the weights as they limply hung at my sides. "And perhaps that's all for the better."

* * *

 _There was a moan. Another quickly followed, a lustful sigh emitted deep into the air._

 _Encouraged from the verbal feedback, I kept at what I was doing. My fingers found warmth and the worn but supple material of an enviro-suit. I dug my digits into the raised material, striving to push past it and to attack the sensitive flesh and nerves underneath. As I pressed my fingers in further, gently rubbing in a slow rhythm, I ever so slightly migrated my hands upward, halting when I detected a slight knob of bone from my prodding efforts - a shoulder blade. Knowing where to strike, I gently kneaded a thumb on top of the shoulder blade, stimulating a nerve cluster that was helplessly subject to the pressure I presented._

 _And the quarian lying below me on the bed loved me all the more for it._

" _Nnnnggghhh…" Nya groaned as her arms quickly shot out in front of her, ramrod straight, her fingers grasping the edges of the bed and bunching the sheets. "Gaaahhhh…" she cried helplessly as she also dug her helmeted head into the mattress she was lying on, her legs kicking feebly in midair._

 _Kneeling above her on the same bed, I grinned broadly as I continued to massage my wife, my hands tenderizing the back of the tensed quarian. It was a heavy thought, knowing that I could have her at my mercy with a precise application of a single finger. Nya lay on her stomach, too overwhelmed for any discernible words (as evidenced earlier), with the majority of her trappings that usually adorned her person all crumpled in a heap by the bed - her belts, clasps, and most of her ceremonial fabrics were the items that had been discarded. Pretty much the only thing she wore, besides the thick material of her enviro-suit, was the hood that covered her brushed silver helmet._

 _Nya continued to moan and keen in pleasure as I massaged her back, pretty much confirming that whatever I was doing was working rather well. The quarian body contained very slight differences between a human's, but for the most part, many of the bone, circulatory, and other system structures were arranged remarkably similar to my own, meaning that I could make highly educated guesses as to where was the best place to stimulate my wife with my fingers, other than what the blindingly obvious answer would be normally._

 _I had to consider, as I pressed my knuckles upon an area on the quarian's lower back (eliciting more groans of ecstasy), that Nya genuinely enjoyed these massage sessions because quarians, despite being very community-minded, did not grow up in an environment that permitted the kind of physical connections that other races might share. Humans loved to hug each other, regardless of gender. Krogans had an affinity for head-butting the other either in greeting or as a sign of dominance. The militaristic lifestyle of turians encouraged sex as a way to blow off steam, and so on and so forth. The suits of quarians prevented most surface-level interactions from carrying the same level of effect as it did on other species. Once they were free of the suits, then it was a whole different story, but quarians, in general, never really had considered the option that they would be able to receive a form of body stimulation that typically carried no carnal meaning, as they considered such tender affairs to be extremely private, only to be carried out in intimate settings._

 _Luckily, this happened to be an intimate setting, and here, I was able to show Nya the wonders a massage could do to a person, not to mention she could be shown what she had been missing throughout her life. I could tell that she needed one right now - her shoulders were as tense as rock. It actually took a good ten minutes of me kneading away just on those muscles until they slowly began to loosen like jelly. From then on out, she was putty in my fingers._

" _Oh…" Nya suddenly squeaked out as I rotated a finger upon her spine. "That's it… right there…"_

 _I increased pressure slightly and Nya burrowed her face into the blankets again, electricity firing on all nerves in her brain. How I wished that I could do this to her when she was out of her suit, but she was still recovering from a slight cold she had caught just a couple days ago and I did not want her to risk her health any more (despite her protests). Besides, if she were to be out of her suit, I don't think that either of us would be able to remain calm enough for a simple massage. One of us would wind up jumping the other in minutes._

 _Besides, I was enjoying myself very much just doing this._

 _I let my hands drift lower, down along the back of her ribcage, to cup her slender waist, and finally halted upon her upper hips, just above her buttocks. There were plenty of pressure points for here to manipulate and I did not waste any time grinding my thumbs into the bones of her hips, causing Nya to let out her loudest moan yet._

" _How's that feel?" I whispered, my voice tender and soothing as I bent down, just over my wife's head - trying to sound like I had an insistent request on the tip of my tongue._

" _Wond-... aaaggghh," Nya sobbed in joy as she continued to stretch her body out, "...w-wonderfu-"_

 _She couldn't even finish the word._

 _Spurred on from her intense reactions, I upped the ante with how much attention I was providing her with my massage. I alternated the areas where I applied my hands, ratcheting up the intensity for a bit before lightening up and slowing back down. This relentless yet teasing approach caused Nya to start writhing on the bed, once again reverting to guttural noises in lieu of complete sentences._

 _I had to admit, manipulating her body like this to make her feel good, it was turning me on._

 _Apparently I had no idea that Nya was more aroused that I had initially figured, because after a few minutes, I was completely caught off guard when I suddenly felt all of Nya's muscles lock up and she spasmed before my eyes with a long, low moan. The bed vibrated for a bit as a tremor spread all over Nya, from her hips to the tips of her toes. Dumbfounded, astounded, yet impressed with myself, I carefully pried my hands away from my wife's gasping body, staring at them as though I expected lightning to suddenly arc from them._

" _Did you just…?" I said flatly, hardly daring to believe it._

" _Oh yeah," Nya said as she oriented her body sideways on the bed. Her eyes were lidded upwards and she had to be gazing at me with such a smug expression, having been satisfied in more ways than one._

" _But… I wasn't even touching you in places that…" I tried to say, but I was too flabbergasted from my unintentional victory._

" _Shh, no more talking," Nya cooed as she gradually sat up, momentarily arching her back like a cat. She crawled over the bed to where I sat, where I was still surprised at this newly discovered ability my fingers apparently had at their disposal, and she firmly placed her hands on my shoulders so that she could shove me flat on the mattress, her veiled expression devilish._

" _A little antsy, are we?" I smirked as Nya began to straddle me. I laid my hands onto her hips as she slowly lowered her upper body so that she was soon lying flat onto me._

 _Nya simply laid a gloved finger over my lips as my ears were drawn to the sound of her soft breaths through a synthesized filter. She threw her arms around my neck and pressed herself close to me, her body so warm that I could feel her glow, even through her suit. Her stomach pressed against mine as she took deep breaths and her legs began to tangle themselves against me, her toes curling in anticipation._

" _You spoil me too much," she whispered with a light laugh. "How many quarians get this type of treatment from their spouse?"_

" _I could hazard a guess that very few do," I said with an impish look._

" _Mmm," came her tantalizing murmur as she delicately stroked my bearded cheek. "Then I'm a very lucky girl."_

 _I closed my eyes as my face adopted a peaceful expression while Nya's fingers tauntingly tiptoed their way over my chest. I had to fight not to break out into a grin as her wandering hands briefly tickled my stomach, but it was when I felt her groping to get my belt off did I finally raise my head as I brought a hand to the metal of her helmet to pause her momentarily._

" _You know," I said around a nervous tongue, "you don't need to reciprocate for times like this."_

 _Nya's hand quit fumbling at my waistband as she looked to me in confusion. "Do you not want me to make you happy?"_

 _Now I finally laughed. "That's not it, dear. I don't give you this kind of attention with the implicit promise that you do the same back to me. There are people out there who specifically enjoy making people like you comfortable and satisfied. Hell, just knowing that you're happy makes me happy."_

" _Still… I wonder if-,"_

" _Ah, stop worrying," I dismissed as I hugged her closer and nuzzled my head against her glassy barrier. "Remember, I'm a guy. We're pretty blunt about our wants and needs. Believe me, if I say that I don't need anything to be happy, then you can pretty much take me at my word."_

 _Nya's hand came again to my cheek as I felt her ribs press up against my side as she began to breathe a little more intensely. I could discern the little flutter of her heart's triad of beats as she slowed herself down and began to focus more intensely. She nudged her head forward a bit, like she had the inclination to kiss me, but remembered that she was still helmeted, which brought her spirits down a bit. In response, I began lightly stroking her neck where the suit was thinnest, sending my care and love her way with these gentle caresses, wanting her to know that I cared very much for her, despite that damn suit._

" _So… Sam."_

" _Yes?" I asked._

 _Nya looked up at the ceiling briefly before she fixated upon me. "Is… are you sure there isn't anything that I can do now to make you as happy as possible?"_

 _That wonderful woman. She never did quit. I should really count my blessings and proclaim myself the luckiest man alive to have found someone who loved and emphasized me so deeply._

" _Just lay here with me," I said as I gently ruffled her hood above her head. "Let's just rest a while. We've got nothing else to do for today."_

 _Nya sighed as she laid her head upon my chest and she gave a hidden smile as my breathing propped her head up in a steady rhythm._

" _Well," she finally conceded with a satisfied yawn, "I can certainly do that."_

* * *

"Sam, Sam… how you've changed."

The lulling words provided a sense of relief until the harsh realization came to me that the voice itself was _not_ Nya's. Thrown for a loop, I sucked in an involuntary breath of panic, filling my lungs with cold air and rapidly throwing me out of my sleep.

I uttered a short shout, a usual reaction to be awakened so suddenly, and tried to get my bearings after regaining consciousness in an unexpected fashion. The dream, a moment where I felt so alive and real, melted away in an instant, leaving me cold, aching, and covered in goosebumps.

It took me longer than usual, but I should have realized that I was now back in Eyzn's good old interrogation room, where he repeatedly worked his magic on me, and once again he was standing right in front of me, ready to begin. Same stuffy white room, same despicable company. Hard to believe that I had probably been asleep when he had hauled me into this room and had the barrier of his prison drones wrench me into the usual position before I had awoke, seeing as the last thing that I remembered before I had dozed off in the Shed was me looking at the industrial patterns of the ceiling rafters while lying on top of a hard bench in the main block.

The drones centered their lenses upon me, causing me to levitate about a foot above the ground, arms held out wide in a vaguely religious posture. At least the barrier was now lenient enough for me to shake my head in order for me to help wake myself up a bit more. I wanted to be as focused as possible when dealing with the ravings of this man.

"You'd better run that by me again," I grimaced as I yawed my jaw, trying to iron out the kinks I had accumulated while I had been asleep. "I don't think I completely heard you there."

"I was just commenting to myself," Eyzn said as he stepped forward, arms folded behind his back. "I find that the more time goes on, the longer you've remained in the Shed, you've only grown more defiant. More cynical and grating than usual. Do you know why that is?"

I rolled my eyes. "I don't know and I don't care. But being trussed up like a turkey while you carve into me probably has something to do with my rather acerbic behavior. That being said, I don't have time to converse with you. Just get started with your business and at least do me the courtesy of shutting the fuck up while you torture me, will you?"

"Oho!" Eyzn laughed as he now brandished his knife from its sheath, light glinting off the blade in blinding flashes. "Is _this_ what you really want, Sam? The taste of metal at your skin? Far be it from me to comment on your 'stately' goals, but I honestly thought you could do better."

Eyzn hefted the knife a bit, flipping it between fingers before he finally pinched the hilt, letting it dangle over the floor.

And then, he let go.

The knife made a loud clatter as it hit the floor, the echoes taking a long time to finish reverberating across the walls. Eyzn made a tiny huff of satisfaction as he kicked the blade away, letting it tumble end over end as it skidded out of sight.

"It occurred to me not too long ago that I might have been approaching this from the wrong angle," Eyzn sighed as he lifted a finger to prod at my scarred body, lightly tracing the wide, white line that ran along the side of my neck. "Still, I've kept at my current itinerary just to see if I could at least make a chink in your armor. I've probably just been wasting my time, though. These little discussions that we've held, I've never been able to pry anything of use from you. How could I? The problem here was, that I've been brash, unfocused. I've never really let onto what I've wanted the most from you."

"I _know_ what you want," I growled in a biting tone, ignoring the quarian's finger brushing my neck to the best of my ability. "There's nothing complex about it. You just want to see me and my family _dead_."

Eyzn finally pried his hand away and gave a deliberate shake of his head, his neck stilled with glee. "Not exactly, Sam. You're on the right track, but your conclusions are too simplistic. I don't want _all_ of you dead - I just want to make sure that retribution is paid back in kind to those who wronged me."

"So what's the fucking difference?" I sighed, wishing for the thousandth time that I could move my hands to rip off this quarian's head.

"Someday, you'll understand _exactly_ what the difference is," the man taunted. "Not now, but someday. That I promise you."

"Your promises mean jack shit."

The quarian placed a hand over his heart. "I can see why you would believe that. I would be skeptical too, were I in your position. It may be easy for you to believe that my ulterior motive is simple. The clues are seemingly obvious, aren't they? You're smart - you can fill in the blanks. Perhaps I might be planning to mount a coup and take over the leadership on Rannoch? Perhaps I might be trying to mount a terrorist attack on a populated world to carve out my own little dominion. After all, why else would I have gathered all these poor lost souls in this place? All these quarians, my people, for a singular purpose. A private army has to have a goal, after all - a reason for its creation."

Eyzn then began to walk in a slow pace around my suspended form, keeping his gaze upon my body even though I could not see him as he stalked behind me. "The truth is less obvious, but far less ambitious, unfortunately. You're only setting yourself up for disappointment if you think that my plans are so grandiose. I have no grand design for my forces - this place, the Shed, was a relic, an inheritance from the late Admiral Xen. _She_ started the project to kidnap pilgrims and force them into being part of an army. This just happened to be the warehouse that she did her misdeeds in, hinted at in her war files. I simply picked up the pieces after the civil war had ended, knowing that such a place might come in handy someday. I figured, all this personnel and equipment has to be put to use, why not utilize them to carry out my bidding for the time being? They've served me well so far and they've gotten me all the more closer to reaching my ultimate goal."

"And that is?" I continued to struggle against my transparent bonds.

"Simple," Eyzn stepped in front of me again and prodded my chest with an insistent finger. "I want to know what I have been missing in my life and I believe that you're the key for helping me to experience just that."

I tried to wrap my mind around Eyzn's statement, to no avail.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

My enemy gave a dismissive wave and a laugh. "I wouldn't expect you to be aware of your contribution to the matter, but rest assured that you have already helped me into making significant progress toward that goal. You see, I feel as though I learn a lot about myself from you, Sam. We're both very similar in that our lives have been shaped by the same themes."

"I think that I've heard this cliché before," I snorted.

"Yet I don't hear you denying the resemblance. We're both people out of our element, Sam. The two of us understand the meaning of loss and despair. Me with my mother, you with your child. You feel the same anger I do, hoping that it will destroy those you lash it against. We're no better than monsters, Sam. We've done horrible things to other people - what is keeping our rational selves tethered to us anymore? What obligation do we have to do what is considered good in society's eyes?"

I did not answer and set my jaw in response, believing that any answer I utter would be the wrong one.

"You see the monster in yourself," Eyzn continued as he took a step back, "because _that's_ the wound that destroys you every day. _That's_ where my fault has lied this whole time - finding the root of your guilt was never going to be from physical torture, it was always going to be from the disgrace that has compounded in your mind, born from the actions you have performed on those closest to you."

Now Eyzn lifted his hands and pulled his dark blue hood from his helmet. From within was revealed the remainder of the dull silver of the covering that encased the quarian's head. As with every quarian, a litany of tubes snaked from the back of the helmet to run along the back of their suit, wiring into a multitude of life support system and backup functions to ensure the wearer's health. If anything, Eyzn looked rather vulnerable without it. I was surprised that he would make such a demonstration to me, but I would be in for an even greater shock when he placed his hands on either side of his visor.

"Now look upon _this_ monster of your own creation," Eyzn breathed as his fingers suddenly depressed the catches with a satisfying metal click.

There was a slight hiss of pressurized air and the electric blue coating soon lifted away.

The demon revealed before me, I could only look on in shock as a gray face stared back at me with a scornful look.

What surprised me most of all was how _young_ Eyzn looked. He was well into his twenties, but he appeared almost childlike. Not at all how someone full of hate should appear. His skin was remarkably clear and smooth, pasty in the artificial light. A few traces of thin black hair trailed down from his scalp to partially cover Eyzn's forehead, all clumped up by the helmet he wore. There were no distinguishing marks upon the quarian, no freckles or scars, which would otherwise differentiate him from simply being another face in the crowd - I was struck at how ordinary he appeared to me.

Everything about him, the closer I looked, really was as average as could be. Downward tipped eyes, medium-sized nose, thin-lipped mouth with a fair width, and a rounded chin. Any other shade of skin and Eyzn could easily pass for a human. Even Nya, despite her similarities to my race, had this aura about her that immediately gave away her alienness, a trait that I could _not_ discern in Eyzn. It alarmed me, threw me off guard. I gulped, victim to the preying fear that Eyzn had intended to sic upon me.

But, there were some stark differences between Eyzn and Nya. It seemed that Nya's medical implants were far less intrusive than Eyzn's because on this man, I could see a few tubes snake around from within the recesses of his helmet to intrude upon his face. One such tube ran into a nostril, providing a constant supply of fresh air, while another slithered into the corner of his mouth. A metallic glint near the quarian's temple silently blinked a fresh yellow light, allowing me to see that Eyzn's implants were either not as clandestine as Nya's, or that the man was naturally in a more sickly state.

"Not quite what you were expecting, Sam?" Eyzn giggled, the sound somehow having a little more malice to it now that I could see the quarian's Cheshire cat grin - shining white teeth as his flawless dimples stretched into a clown-like smile, almost unearthly. If his goal was to unsettle me, then he certainly succeeded.

"Holy Christ," my own mouth twisted up into disgust. "You really are insane."

The maw of Eyzn's mouth was revealed as he basked in a bellowing laugh, eyes sparkling with madness. "Finally, your toughened persona has been withered away! All these months and all I had to do was remove this barrier between us. Sometimes even the simplest actions provide the most drastic results."

"It's just that I'm rather astounded you would do such a thing _here_ ," I looked all around, indicating this room, unable to hide my skepticism. "You're _that_ confident that this place is clean? I knew you would take several stupid risks but this seems… rather unnecessary even for you. Foolish, even."

"Aw, that worried about me, Sam?" the quarian mocked, his sarcastic sneer twisted into an almost parody-like level, as if Eyzn truly had no idea just how terrifyingly skewed his facial expressions were. "Afraid that my immune system will fail me at this critical moment? Fear not, for I've been steadily accumulating myself week after week, dosing myself with antibiotics as necessary. I can withstand the reaction to you, since you're the only foreign agent in here with me. You're not a danger at all. You've lived with one for a time but you still have yet to realize that quarians aren't as fragile as you think."

"Is this because I can walk around without a mask?" I bent my head slightly as a new purple blast of light hit me over the head, warming my hair. "Are you so jealous of me that you would risk everything to mimic how I live my own life without having to ever fear of dying by breathing unfiltered air?"

Eyzn frowned for a split second, but it was enough for me to notice and Eyzn saw that I _had_ noticed. Just like Nya, Eyzn had been living under a helmet his whole life that he never had to focus on the tiny revelations his facial language gave out. He still was unable to mask whatever emotion flitted across his face, allowing me to read him like a book.

Now enraged, Eyzn walked up to me and roughly grabbed my chin, forcing my face to be dangerously close to his. I had the crazed inclination to point out that I was breathing my germs into the man's face, but I held my tongue, utterly bewildered at how this was going to play out.

"Why would you ever think I'm jealous?" Eyzn spat each word out slowly, his eyes furrowed precariously and his mouth twisted in a sneer. "Of you? I don't need envy. I have more to my life right now than you, after all. In fact…" Eyzn's lips shook as he mustered them into a smile, "...you have no idea as to how much you've lost, don't you?"

"The hell are you talking about?" I mustered, cheeks squished painfully between Eyzn's fingers until the quarian released his hold on my face.

Now Eyzn tapped on his own cheek mockingly, a maddening smile gracing his features.

"You know… I think that it's now time that I get to show this to you," he simpered as he engaged his omni-tool before orienting it in my direction. "I've been saving this for when I thought I could utilize it for maximum effect. Besides, it's only fair that you get to see the whole truth."

"And what truth would that be?" I scowled before I saw the holographic interface widen into a larger screen while a loading icon began to tumble. "You're going to play me a video file? What's it about?"

"Simple. I'm going to show you how your loyalty has been rewarded. Particularly pertaining to your _wife_ , in this instance."

 _Nya_. An icicle ran through my chest as the imaginary knife edged in just a bit deeper. What could he possibly mean? Was this a trick? What the hell was going on?

"I'm not going to believe anything you show me," I gritted out, each word taking a monumental effort to voice. "You're only going to have lies. You can't possibly have any footage of Nya that paints her that way you want me to see her."

Eyzn's grin widened even more. "You might be surprised," he said as he angled the screen more my way. "But it would have been naive of me to assume that you would take evidence like this at face value. Trust me, I'll show you once it's done that I have done nothing to fake this recording in any conceivable way. I'll provide you the proof you need."

"What the-," I tried as I shook my head, "the fuck kind of video is this going to be about? Are you… are you trying to show me proof th-that… hell, I don't know what it could be about. What, is Nya cheating on me or something?"

The quarian had to bend over for he started laughing so hard and he wiped tears from his eyes in his mirth.

"Oh, now wouldn't _that_ be something? Alas, Sam, this is not a video of Nya having relations with another person in your absence - no kissing, hugging, or anything like that. Believe me, if I did have footage of such a thing, I'd certainly be showing it to you right now. You would have to _restrain_ me to prevent me from letting you watch something like that!

The quarian finished laughing and momentarily held his chest, as if doing so would still his revelry. "On the other hand, what I have for you today might just be even worse than what you could imagine."

Without further ado, Eyzn pressed the haptic button on his tool and the video began to play. There was a flurry of static on the virtual screen for just a moment until everything coalesced and began to clear. The image flared once and finally settled, allowing me to get a rather wide projection of a room that I recognized as the living room in Nya's - _our_ \- apartment. The knowledge that Eyzn could get footage from within the place where Nya rested her head would be the least of my worries as the video continued to play, my blood pressure already beginning to spike.

" _-I did what you requested of me_ ," I heard Nya's voice crackle out before the camera maneuvered to show her sitting anxiously upon the couch next to the window. " _I want you to leave now._ "

" _Not just yet_ ," Eyzn's own voice burst through as I saw, to my horror, the man's projection step forward into frame, brought to life by the Orb floating where his chest was. " _You did well to alert me of this conversation that you were having with this man Chandler, but I still need more information because I still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle._ "

" _You promised that you would leave me alone!_ " I saw Nya cry out, my face starting to tremble as I found myself praying in horror for her to stop talking to Eyzn, no matter what the truth might actually be. " _You said that you would never bother me again if I gave you-_ ,"

" _-any pertinent information on Sam,_ " was the last line that I heard Eyzn say before I went deaf in my anguish.

How? How could Nya have gone so far to get to this point with Eyzn? She would have to hate me so much for this to be possible! To hate me with all her heart! What could have possessed her to do this?! What could Eyzn possibly have offered her to even provide Nya the inclination to sell me out?!

But the revelations for the day were not yet finished.

" _-I can help you heal, Nya_ ," Eyzn was saying on the screen. _"I can make the pain stop_."

" _How?_ " Nya's image and I whispered at the same time.

" _I know what it is that you want most. I can give it to you_."

Whatever Eyzn meant, Nya seemed to have a vague understanding of the direction that he was going in, but I did not. My eyes began to burn and my lungs filled with acid as I finally beheld the moment when Nya motioned for Eyzn to keep talking, apparently not at all perturbed about the nature of her discussion with the man who had tried to kill her before. Who had tried to kill _us_.

" _We both know that Sam made a mistake, yes?_ " Eyzn said on the screen. " _He was the one responsible for the death of your daughter. A terrible error on his part, an irreparable one_." The projection then tilted its head as I barely saw the glow of his eyes fixate impishly upon my wife. " _Or… is it?_ "

" _Just tell me_ ," Nya said as she stretched out her hands. " _Is it possible? Can you do it?_ "

"Nya, no!" I moaned through a clenched throat, feeling so impotent bundled up like this.

" _It can be done_ ," Eyzn's projection said proudly. " _Sam was a fool not to look into it further, but I can do it for you. It only takes the proper tissue samples… and time. One also has to know where proper gene sequencing can take place, but I am aware of a place that can do it on request. The final organism can be synthesized using the equipment that I have at my disposal. It won't be perfect, not 100% analogous to the host, but I will be able to do it."_

" _Then…_ " Nya breathed hopefully, " _...my daughter can live again?_ "

"W-What?" I croaked, dumbfounded. _No… that's not possible._

" _Absolutely_ ," Eyzn said.

"LIAR!" I screamed as I finally lunged against my intangible bonds, throwing my weight forward uselessly, my teeth snapping at air. Eyzn simply shrugged as he let the video play, allowing me one final glance at Nya willingly sending over the coordinates of our Santa Cruz home to our enemy, providing him with the date and time of our meeting, which was how he knew I had been on Earth and where he could strike.

"You fucking liar!" I bellowed again as Eyzn finally closed the video. "You _knew!_ There's no possible way that you can bring my daughter back again. Not from synthesizing her tissue! You knew… and you twisted Nya's mind… on a _lie!_ "

Eyzn's pompous grin almost caused me to tear out my arms in the effort to rip out the man's throat with my teeth. I wanted to feel the sensation of my jaw sinking into warm flesh, to taste the gush of his blood. I wanted him torn utterly apart so that I would never have to see his face again.

 _My wife… my own wife… betrayed me. She… betrayed me._

"Of _course_ I lied," Eyzn sneered as the omni-tool around his arm finally disengaged. "The two of us both know that there's no way to bring a deceased person back to life, not in the way that Nya probably intended. And… there's certainly no way to produce a viable fetus through synthetic means. After all, where would I have gotten the necessary tissue samples to do such a fictional procedure in the first place? Doctors today still have trouble trying to grow _human_ organs outside of a body, do you think that they can possibly attain the skillset to do the same to the analogue in _quarians_?" The quarian chuckled as he slapped a hand heartily upon his thigh. "I was counting on her lack of knowledge in tissue engineering to help steer my case. Turns out that if you say enough big words, you can sound rather intelligent to the uninformed individual. Then again, what power I had at my disposal, to tell your wife that I could resurrect a dead infant! She was so easy to manipulate - all I had to do was provide the vague promise that I could give the woman back the baby _you_ stole… and that was all it took!"

"Fuck you!" I cried out, utterly destroyed.

It was true, my daughter was dead forever, but Nya had believed otherwise. She had believed it so much that she had been willing to turn to our foes for help. She became susceptible to the lie that Eyzn had placed in her mind. The lie had taken hold… and she sold me out in the hopes that the lie would actually be the truth.

I then knew that I would never have had the chance to make things right between us. Nya had finally abandoned me… completely and willingly.

Eyzn cackled as he shot up next to me, reactivating his omni-tool to show me the video file properties.

"I wasn't lying to you when I said that I'd prove that what you just saw was the truth. Did you see any jitters in the frames? That would be a common mistake usually made when splicing together different images. Notice how there weren't any awkward audio gaps? I can bring up the spectrogram for reference - all the gain levels are the same, which proves that Nya and I were indeed speaking in the same room - and there are no ugly breaks in the visual to show that I might have pasted in otherwise incriminating audio. Believe me, I did not alter this video in any way. I did not mute any parts that would otherwise disprove Nya's guilt. I did not trim any substantial sections from our conversation that could exonerate your wife. This file is the real thing, completely _unaltered_."

I had failed her. I had failed my wife and my child. I had failed in my goal of being a loving husband and a caring father… but never could I have believed that Nya would have been capable of failing me.

Guilt set upon me - I felt like I was being crushed underfoot by it. Something black was chewing at my insides, burrowing through my cavity in an attempt to escape. Tears and drool streaked my face as I started to sob, as I felt myself become torn in two, left in tatters emotionally. All the while Eyzn continued to laugh, his victory finally achieved. My vision became double and a headache felt like it was stabbing me straight through my skull. My urge to kill the quarian in front of me dissipated like pollen in the wind.

All that was left was for my wretched existence to finally come to a close.

"Do… it…" I spluttered thickly. "Get it over with."

"Whatever do you mean?" Eyzn asked with a mild expression while he examined his fingers airily.

I hacked up a globule of spit as another sob horribly shook me. "You got what… you wanted. You won. You can… you can end it now. I… I want you to do it. I-I want… I… I w-want you to kill me."

That seemed to take Eyzn aback, as evidenced by the shocked look on his face. A smile then slowly spread from one corner to the other as he approached to gently lay a hand upon my cheek, his warm, gloved palm carefully caressing me in a surprisingly passionate gesture. The quarian quietly shook with glee and anticipation before taking several deep breaths to calm himself down.

"And to think," he whispered to himself as he dabbed a tear from my cheek, "I had the key to your capitulation this whole time."

Then Eyzn's eyes turned hard as his mouth transformed into a wild grimace. I felt microscopic under the full force of the man's anger, completely alone and afraid.

I felt his fingers ball up without even seeing the physical act accomplished. My head was then slammed to the side as Eyzn whacked me on the jaw with all of his strength, sending a resounding crack echoing through my head. Blood was added to the thick mix in my mouth, drowning me with its iron taste, and it dribbled to the ground and formed a splatter pattern underneath where my feet were suspended above the ground.

Dazed, chin streaked red, I nearly passed out only for Eyzn to brutally yank me by my hair and lifted my head up.

"Did you really think that it was just going to end here?" Eyzn asked incredulously. "That I would kill you because you simply _want_ me to? You don't know how this is going to work, Sam. Things aren't so simple for you. I still have so much more left to show you - my work has far surpassed what you could possibly conceive - and you want me to kill you before you realize the entire breadth of your failure? No, not when you still have so much to tell _me_."

"I…" I mustered through swollen lips. "I-I don't…"

The quarian shook as he anticipated his next words. "Do you really think that I am stupid, Sam? All this time, all these months, and you still have stuck to the same story. Are you seriously going to continue with the narrative that _you_ killed my mother?"

Sweat sprang up along my arms and my heart gave a jolt. Wandering eyes refused to still and I gagged as I reflexively inhaled my own bloody phlegm.

 _No… no… I can't…_

"I _know_ that you didn't do it," Eyzn breathed. "I've always known, you fool, but I've humored this fiction of yours long enough. I think we both truly know who the culprit really was… but I want to hear the name from your own mouth. If you don't…" Eyzn bent down as he retrieved his knife from the ground and held it against my face, "...I'll finally lose my patience. I'll carve out your eyes and take them for myself as trophies. And I will not be gentle."

Never had I been under so much stress and pain all at one time. This gnawing agony… it transcended past the plane of my mind to inflict its destruction upon me physically. I felt as if I was falling apart, disintegrating into a puddle of useless skin and bones. I hiccoughed, my face soaked from my blood and tears, the few threads keeping me together were being sheared away before my eyes.

 _What could I have done to make you love me again?_ I wanted to cry out.

 _Did I even have a chance?_

 _And now… you killed me, Nya. You let me die_.

The sweet cool breath of air finally pushed into my lungs, a final act of defiance from a dead man.

"Very… very well," I said, steel backing my words as I raised myself as much as I could within my restraints. " _She did it._ "

Eyzn mimicked being hard of hearing and leaned his face closer to mine. "I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up, Sam." His mocking grin widened. "I don't think I heard you clearly."

Heart pounding out of my chest, lungs about to burst, broken teeth tumbling in my mouth, I locked eyes with the man - steel blue against warm silver.

My voice then flowed.

" _Nya_ killed your fucking mother, you son of a bitch. I only lied because I _wish_ that I had been the lucky bastard that had done it."

And then I reared my head and spit in Eyzn's face

Eyzn shuddered as a red mist splattered all over him. Tiny beads speckled against unmarred skin. He made a quick noise of surprise, something that sounded like, " _Urk!_ " and gave a startled jolt. I saw his smooth gray face become completely coated with little beads of my blood and his eyes widened as far as they could go. The quarian shakily touched his hand to his face, smearing my blood onto his skin before he stared at his palm, at the damning proof that coated his suit. His lower lip trembled and he took a terrified step backwards.

"This…" his voice cracked, "...this isn't…"

Blood spurting from between my teeth, I started to softly chuckle as Eyzn dropped further and further away from me, his limping feet carrying him to the safety of the door beyond as he took a desperate wipe of his face, only making things worse as half his face was then painted red. The man fumbled as he attempted to put his visor back onto his helmet, taking deep breaths as he tried to understand the blow that I had just dealt him. He knew the potential of what had happened, what could befall him, and I finally knew that I had shaken the damn alien.

My own laughs raised in volume as Eyzn hastily departed from my sight. I quickly escalated to emitting howls of glee, blood and drool continuing to run down my chin as I shook with my newfound amusement. I shut my eyes as I allowed my head to hang, gravity doing all the work, as I continued to writhe with each fresh peal of laughter, newly born tears dripping down my face as my emotions ran rampant, leaving me vulnerable to their little influences.

My shrieking roars of exuberance faded as my throat became clogged with sobs. The laughter eventually subsided, dying an ignominious death, as I fell back to earth. I tried to giggle some more, but my eyes watered and my heart gave a throb as I thought of my wife, and the deep hatred she truly felt for me. Whatever joy had struck me like lightning minutes ago had long faded, leaving despair to fill the void.

The final chuckling burst was uttered as a sickly snivel. The wonder and happiness had finally faded. I broke down about five minutes after Eyzn had left me alone, a helplessly crying human hung from the air, his will to live finally extinguished.

The sounds of my weeping, the room snuffing them out in seconds, were my lullaby as I lost consciousness, traumatized from the day's events.

* * *

 **A/N: Happy... holidays?**

 **I wish I was able to provide you all a less grim chapter in time for the Christmas season, but alas, this is where we're at. I suspect that you might find the next chapter to be... interesting, shall we say (if you don't decide to pack up after reading this one, that is). Speaking of which, since we're now approaching the usual winter break due to the holidays, I'll be taking a longer period of time to rest before starting back up on writing, so the next chapter definitely won't be out until the next year. As much as I like writing these dour scenes, they do burn me out something fierce.**

 **At the very least, I hope you enjoy yourselves for the remainder of 2017 and I look forward to seeing you again when this story picks back up then!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Sam's 1st Night in the Shed: "Assassin" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Workout Montage: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**

 **Eyzn's Crippling Blow: "Hijack" by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer from the film _Blade Runner: 2049_**


	13. Chapter 10: The Patriarch

Several days had passed and Da'var had still not shared a word to Ahrun in that time. There had been long periods throughout their shared incarceration where Ahrun had not spoken to the human for some reason or another, but the length of this silent spell trumped them all by miles. Ahrun could not help but feel worried for the human. Was this meant to be a temporary phase or was something seriously vexing the man? Da'var had never been this withdrawn before, not since he had been carted in to talk with Eyzn days ago. Whatever they had discussed must have been volatile, because Da'var had been in a sullen mood since then, quiet and introverted more so than usual.

As much as Ahrun tried to understand this shift in the human's behavior, he quickly realized that there was nothing he could glean from context clues alone. As much as he knew about Da'var, he still had no idea what really made him tick. The Shed had a tendency to break its inhabitants over time, but mostly through the use of physical torture. Da'var did not seem to be sporting evidence of such obvious pain like raw cuts or fresh bruises, which meant that whatever Eyzn had said to him had rattled the man down to his core, shaking him and maybe even breaking him.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall… (even though Ahrun had a very vague idea as to what a fly was).

Ahrun had tried a couple of times to gain the attention of the human in the period between now and then, but each time he had been brushed off and ignored. Da'var made a conscious effort to stay away from Ahrun, now preferring to mull in private rather than speak to anyone. Ahrun could at least say to himself that he had made valid attempts to speak with the damaged human, only to receive the cold shoulder in return. Small comfort _that_ was.

It was driving Ahrun crazy trying to imagine what had silenced Da'var so efficiently.

After about the fifth time of trying to talk to the human and getting absolutely nowhere, Ahrun finally took the hint and quit his fruitless attempts. He still kept an eye on the man from time to time, just to take note of his behavior. What he saw over the coming days did not exactly bode well.

Da'var had apparently quit his daily routine to the point where it basically had collapsed overnight. The human never so much as touched any of the exercise equipment off in the corner that he used to kill any free time he had anymore. Also, Ahrun was observant enough to note that Da'var was not finishing all of the contents of the nutrient paste that he had been provided, sometimes where there was more than half of his food still left in the tube. If this kept up, Ahrun noted, Da'var would start to lose weight at an alarming rate. Was the human deliberately trying to starve himself? What would be the point of that? What the hell had happened to the previously determined human?

What did Eyzn _say_ to him to make Da'var like this?

Ahrun had a sneaking suspicion, after about the third day of this mood shift, that he would never see the true Da'var again. Yet, he continued to hope.

He was still hoping after about a week had passed, but the more Ahrun looked over at the human's lost expression, the more his hope faded. Even right now, as he sat amongst a group of about seven quarians mindless chatting over insignificant topics around a shoddily constructed aluminum table, Ahrun could not help himself from taking intermittent glances over at Da'var, each time praying that the human would have come to his senses by then. Each time he would be disappointed.

With a rueful sigh, Ahrun slowly drew his concentration back over to the conversation that his fellow quarians were carrying out. A couple of the aliens were hastily gesticulating across the table they sat at, creating creaks in the aluminum benches as their weight constantly shifted around. Ahrun soon realized that everyone was in the middle of a debate, yet another desperate attempt to make time go by quicker by engaging in a thinly constructed dialogue. This particular conversation was covering the proper tools necessary to clean out an eezo exhaust manifold – one side was favoring a particular company's parts while the other was defending the reputation of a competitor. Ahrun wanted to kill himself after enduring five minutes of this crap. It was a dreadfully uninteresting topic, which was why Ahrun was light on participating. Usually Ahrun worked on light craft back on the flotilla – the engineering behind capital ships did not interest him all that much to begin with. Apparently the rest of the group had the same sentiment, because the conversation quickly flamed out in minutes, both sides discovering that there was not enough meat to this argument to successfully fill out a suitable chunk of time.

A quarian a couple of heads away from Ahrun made a disgusted noise and slapped an empty food tube away in frustration, the rattling container providing only a slight deviation in their interest. " _Keelah_. Another day of monotony, it looks like."

"This is so stupid," another one of the quarians groused out loud. "I can't keep throwing out mindless stuff for us to talk about and then give up ten minutes in. I'm just tired of sitting around and doing nothing. I can't concentrate in this place!"

"Join the club," the first quarian said. "Until we get called into the back room for another round, we're stuck in this room with nothing to do."

"It's not like anyone else is helping out. It would be better to get some new suits into the mix - unfamiliar people. Bring in some fresh ideas. New conversation. You know."

"Agreed," the first quarian muttered as he looked up to the catwalks crisscrossing their way a few stories above their heads. "But this is where we're at. Down with the rest of the poor _bosh'tets_. Makes you wonder if being up there would be any better."

"What, with the guards? That's insane. Don't tell me you're actually considering _joining_ that side after what they've done to you? I, for one, am not feeling any loyalty to them after I've been beaten the past three times."

"Why not?" the potentially seditious quarian shrugged. "I've been asked twice already if I wanted to be a part of 'the winning team,' and if I refuse a third time I'm only going to get hurt more. It will only continue the more I resist. I don't know about any of you, but I'm tired of being electrocuted and beaten up. It's the choice between facing an uncertain amount of boredom and pain down here, or being able to have some more freedom up there."

Another quarian leaned over with judgmental eyes. "You're talking about abandoning everyone else for your own _gain_ , Relni. Have you learned nothing while you were on the fleet? We don't put ourselves above the collective!"

The quarian named Relni scoffed in derision. "What collective? _Us?_ We're a powerless band of vagabonds – all strangers to each other. We've never met outside of this room before, let alone served on the same ship. This isn't a collective, it's a fractured collection of drifters. I don't think I'm alone in wanting my misery to end. Ask yourselves, all of you, do you really want to remain a prisoner for the rest of your life?"

There was a long beat of silence.

"Not really," a quarian muttered timidly at last.

"No," another soon piped up.

"Probably not."

"I certainly don't."

"I rest my case," Relni said with a proud affect. "Every one of us here can see that we have no future languishing here. If we all agree that we will follow the orders of this man, this… Eyzn, he'll provide us some of our freedoms back. Is that not preferable to being caged here like an animal?"

"Many things are preferable to that," a new voice interjected. "But what you're talking about is settling for less."

The subtle tapping of fingers at the long aluminum table the quarians were sitting at was enough to draw their attention away from the loudmouth for a moment, even if the new voice would have not spoken up. Everyone turned to find Ahrun staring back at them, a hand supporting his head as he appraised them with a look that amounted to extreme disappointment.

Ahrun was surprised himself at entering the conversation this way, but he took an unseen breath and continued, now noticing that everyone was leveling expectant gazes in his direction.

"We're all caged, yes, but we've had lives outside this building where we had considerably more freedom than what's currently being offered." To Relni, Ahrun now looked directly at him. "You would rather surrender everything, your free will and voice, in exchange to be put up in the catwalks amongst the rest of the losers? All the people helping to keep us imprisoned, they're the ones who _gave up_. They couldn't take the pain or the boredom. They just wanted a way out and they were willing to follow the commands of a madman to do so."

"Name our options, then," Relni growled as he shook a hand in the air. "What other choices do we have? Who cares about the morality of our decision when there is no morality to begin with in this hell?"

If Ahrun had fidgeted about the strength of his will before, this was enough to provide some dose of encouragement. It was now easy for Ahrun to imagine that the strength of his resolve was akin to a sheet of diamondoid armor – tough and nearly impossible to bend. Relni's was like that of an egg – apply the barest pressure and cracks would appear in the shell.

Ahrun never broke eye contact as he straightened his posture. "Morality has very little to do with it. The Shed tests who we really are as people. Are we strong enough to maintain our principles… or are we weak and undeserving of our freedoms? If you take the offer to be one of the people guarding us, then not only us, but your Ancestors will know that when the moment came, you made the choice to save yourself at the expense of others. You will only weaken yourself if you accept Eyzn's invitation."

"And are you confident that _that's_ the way of things?" Relni now stood, not quite in an aggressive stance, but two steps away from doing something entirely unpredictable. "Wherever have you gotten such ideas?"

"The human," the quarian sitting next to Relni said as he jerked his head in the appropriate direction. "Ahto Da'var. He's the one who's been talking with him this past week."

"Is that so?" Relni hummed, interest flickering in his eyes, yet he took a quick turn to appraise where Da'var was sitting and took note of the muscular and bearded alien with some uncertainty. "But what would a human know of these matters? How could he come to such a conclusion as to where our fates lie?"

Ahrun's visor hid a tight smile, the kind where one knew they held the better hand in the face of ignorance.

"That _human_ has lasted far longer than anyone else in this place, including you, Relni. If you had ever talked to him, you might have found out his complete story and how he came to be here. He's the one who's shown the most strength and courage among us. For four months he has withstood Eyzn… yet here he remains, with us."

"Doesn't look like he's bound to be here much longer," another quarian piped up as they stared at Da'var's slouched and miserable posture. "The Shed's eating away at him. I can see it in his eyes."

"You might need another idol," Relni smirked at Ahrun. "He may not last much longer. Eyzn got to him, we can all see it."

Ahrun blindly shook his head, trying to drown out the negativity. "He had his limits. We all do. And that's where we've failed. We haven't given Da'var people to count on, is the problem. All the while he's languished, he's had to sit back while hundreds of us are deposited onto the floor only to eventually make it up into the rafters on the opposing side. Besides, why do you think that he's the only human to be put in the Shed? He's the reason why this place exists, because there's no one else in the galaxy that Eyzn hates more."

There seemed to be a muted kind of understanding that had fallen upon the group like a blanket thrown over everyone's heads. Some of the quarians took careful glances at Da'var now, each one trying to wonder what the human had done to piss Eyzn off so much.

"Then we should set upon him instead!" one more quarian abruptly stood in a fury. "If _he's_ the reason why we're here, then we need to exact our revenge on _him!_ "

"No!" Ahrun yelled out as he stood and darted between the table full of quarians, partially blocking their view of Da'var, who had not even lifted his head at the outburst, by the way. "He isn't your enemy!"

"Yeah, but he's in here with us. We can't get to Eyzn… but we can certainly get to him. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

The quarian that had just stood made a mock bow to everyone as he edged around the table, intent on walking over to Da'var. It was quite clear to Ahrun that this man wanted to inflict pain upon the human and ordinarily Ahrun would have let the quarian find out the hard way that dealing with the powerful human was not going to be beneficial in the long run. However, because Da'var had been in such a bad state for the past few days, Ahrun suddenly felt a spike of terror rush through him.

Before he knew what he was doing, Ahrun bounded over to the side of the table, intercepting the determined quarian well before he reached where Da'var was sitting. The quarian stared at Ahrun lazily and was about to open his mouth to make Ahrun move to the side when all of a sudden, Ahrun lashed out and sank his fist in the middle of the quarian's gut. The man's eyes widened and he gave a wheeze. His legs buckled and he collapsed, clutching his stomach as his body became wracked with coughs.

Now all eyes were taking stock of Ahrun with considerably more agency and he flexed his fingers menacingly before he pointed in Da'var's direction.

"No one touches him," Ahrun growled as he continued to stand over the man he had just struck. "That human is worth more than all of us combined. You simply see him as an outsider but you don't understand him. Not the way I do. You don't know what he's done to deserve the name of 'Ahto Da'var.'"

Ahrun's gaze then swept over the table, as if daring anyone to make a snarky comment. All the other quarians had sat back down, shocked at Ahrun's display of violence, but they were even more surprised when Ahrun bent down to help the quarian back up, the one that he had just hit. The battered quarian was still making stifled coughs and flinched a little at Ahrun's touch, but Ahrun gently guided the man to an empty seat and made sure that he was sitting back down before he addressed the group again.

"I think that you all ought to know why he's here," Ahrun said as he scratched at his shoulder for a second. "Maybe that way none of you would have to generalize. Truth be told, you have no idea just how similar that human is to all of us."

 _Context leads to understanding, after all_ , Ahrun thought with a grin before he began to speak, enjoying the newfound attention his flock was giving him.

* * *

Little did he know, Ahrun was not the only one keeping a close eye on Da'var. How could he? The Shed was designed specifically to separate the wolves from the sheep. After all, why would a sheep need to know the plans of a wolf?

But while Ahrun was recounting the exploits of the human to a group of attentive listeners, nearly all the virtual cameras hanging from the ceiling had all converged their point of focus upon Da'var, also known as Sam McLeod, for Eyzn to take careful stock. Every angle imaginable displayed the man on dozens of screens spanning an entire wall in the Shed's control room, filling the air with a sickly blue light. Seated in the lone chair, the sole audience member to the footage, Eyzn sat with rapt attention, his eyes never leaving the row of vidscreens, his pupils locked and ready to discern any change whatsoever in Sam's vacant expression.

Just like Sam, though, Eyzn had not moved from his chair in almost a week. Only he was paying a much higher price.

Eyzn fought to keep his hands from shaking as he emitted a very wet and rough cough. Caught between his fingers was a vial with a specialized plunger on the end of it, one that fit nicely into his access miters upon his shoulder. Within that vial was the antibiotic solution that had been procured for him – he was up to two doses a day now after this cough had failed to subside.

Eyzn felt physically awful – he had been getting constant cold sweats every day for about a week now, his lungs felt they were felt with fluid, and he always seemed to be in danger of his stomach rejecting food outright.

And then there was this cough, which exacerbated every iota of misery scraping at his body. He fully knew how he had received this affliction, but a part of him was quite concerned at the fact that his symptoms had not even made a hint of subsiding. If Sam spitting into his face would eventually kill him, then that would be the ultimate irony, Eyzn figured.

Well, he would just have to kill the human if things were going to get worse regarding his overall health.

The quarian jerked horribly as he hacked up a lung, each utterance producing the sensation that his throat was slowly being torn open. Fire traveled down his gullet, producing a boiling sensation in his guts. It took all of his strength to keep his hands still as he inserted the vial into the miter and depressed the plunger until it could go no further. There was a feeling of cold liquid coursing through his veins – the antibiotics rushing along – and Eyzn hurled the empty vial away with a savage grunt, shattering the glass against the far wall.

His hands were shaking again. Eyzn bit back a strangled curse as he tightened his fists, determined to drown out the unconscious movements. This was not at all a sickness-induced delirium. This was something more, something that had been festering deep within him for a while.

The feeling of holding a knife in his head, the blade painted with human blood, flooded Eyzn's thoughts. He emitted a gasp as he recalled the sensation of running the serrated edge along pinkish flesh, parting it like butter. It felt like he was cutting into his own skin and Eyzn instinctively clasped a hand to his side but found no pain shooting from there. Where was the agony emitting from if there was no wound? Eyzn dreaded the actual answer.

The amount of abuse that Eyzn vividly recalled piling onto Sam rolled upon him like an avalanche. Each slice of the knife, jolt of electricity, impact of a punch, all of them seemed to creep up on Eyzn, lingering ghosts of memory, and impart upon him in a lingering throb, stealing his breath. Eyzn recalled a time where he had been standing in front of a suspended Sam weeks and weeks ago – the human was bloodied beyond belief from a multitude of cuts marring his flesh, his eyes black and blue, and his extremities helplessly twitching from being exposed to high voltage. How could the human withstand such torture? How did he last for so long? Any other day and Eyzn would have succumbed in an instant to the same treatment.

So, was the human naturally more inclined to take such pain? Or was it because his strength of will was far greater than Eyzn had initially pegged?

Or maybe… was it because that Sam was the stronger out of the two of them?

No… no! Eyzn refused to believe it, as he gave a quiet huff. But the evidence was mounting further than Eyzn had foreseen. Each cut, blow, and jab all had resonated upon the quarian as well. To his horror, Eyzn was feeling sick to his stomach, drawn by all the stress self-caused from hurting the human. The shared torment, it was what drew them together, Sam and him. Each impact left its fair amount of scars upon Eyzn as well. Sam had been throwing all the misery Eyzn had mustered back into the quarian's face, implying the connection between them ran deeper than Eyzn had imagined.

If only Sam knew what he had done when he had literally spat his own blood at his alien brother a week ago. He would have found the literal metaphor to have been… quite amusing. Damn that bastard human.

Eyzn's eyes flicked back up to the screens. Sam still had not moved from his position on the bench, no real surprises there. His mouth twisted into a sneer and his hands clenched at the armrests of his chair, about to go mad from boredom. Eyzn had figured that Sam would be devastated at the news of his wife's betrayal, but he was annoyed at the amount of time it was taking for the human to completely self-destruct. For days on end, Sam had adopted what appeared to be a vow of solitude and silence, completely cutting himself off from having contact with anyone else, thereby not making it easy for Eyzn to determine the mental state of the human. If this phase kept itself up much longer, Eyzn figured that he would throw away the rest of his plans and simply beat the human to death right in front of everyone out of sheer frustration. If he could not derive any more satisfaction from the human's misery, then what was the point in keeping him around?

Thankfully, the sound of the door sliding open behind him was enough to bring him relief. Some company to draw his attention away from the morose human. Eyzn turned in his chair as Vahl approached his desk, a small and circular object held in a hand.

Vahl lifted her arm, allowing Eyzn to see the OCD she had clutched in her fingers. "Sievra's just come back with the latest surveillance."

"Anything interesting on it?" Eyzn grimaced out after sputtering another cough.

"I've indicated the parts you might find the most enjoyable."

Eyzn held out his hand and Vahl deposited the OCD into it. He smiled sullenly. Vahl was a loyal lackey, sharp as a whip and sadistic to boot. However, Eyzn could not help but imagine that her general purpose did not project him as the finishing line, but that he was just a means to an end for her to exact her displeasure upon all the quarians, the ones that had escaped exile, by tarnishing their existence as much as possible. Terribly short sighted, but a useful trait… for now.

Eyzn slid the OCD into a slot on his desk and a holo-screen ignited between him and Vahl. Immediately, Eyzn recognized the trappings of Nya's apartment, and he managed to keep his coughs subsided for a bit as he slid the icon over the parts that Vahl had highlighted for his viewing pleasure.

He was surprised when he saw on the screen that, as of a few days ago, Nya was entertaining company – an asari. Eyzn wracked his brain for a few seconds to come up with the asari's name: Tavre. Colleague of Nya's from C-Sec. He took a rapid scan of the footage and found that the two, Nya and Tavre, had simply talked through the entire exchange and not engaged in any other behavior that would have the potential to make Sam even more miserable. What a terrible shame. Still curious, Eyzn dragged the cursor over to a point on the video almost randomly and let the footage play.

"… _just don't know what else I can do!"_ Eyzn heard Nya sob out all of a sudden, causing him to blink in surprise. " _No one has seen him in months! Where… where could he have gone?!"_

Confused, Eyzn leaned closer to the screen, his stomach scrunching up, but not from his illness.

" _Nya_ ," Tavre said as she gently hooked an arm around Nya's shoulders on the screen. " _You have to understand. I've looked. C-Sec has looked. We've asked everyone who knows him best, your closest friends, his colleagues, but we've found no trace of him. He's simply… gone._ "

" _But… but why would he leave?_ " Nya blubbered. " _He's… we were so… we almost had it_."

" _Nya, what do you mean?_ "

" _He… he couldn't have given up. He was trying so hard until…"_ Nya then quickly pried away her friend's arm as she stood on wobbly legs before heading over to the large window overlooking the neon-infused boulevard. " _I drove him away, Tavre. I hit him back on Earth. Again… and again. He wasn't mad at me the entire time I struck him. He was… sad. I don't know… I was so upset… but I think that I screwed everything up_."

" _Hey, don't be like that_ ," Tavre also rose and tried to place Nya in an awkward hug, but the quarian evaded the gesture.

" _Are you even listening to me?_ " Nya's voice was a horrified whisper.

" _I am, Nya. But what I am saying is that you can't blame yourself for his mistakes. Why would you want someone like him back in your life? You didn't screw anything up."_

Nya deliberately looked away, her expression too distant for Eyzn to make out correctly. " _Then why does it feel like I did? I… I just want to know where he's gone to."_

Eyzn had heard enough. He slapped his hand down onto the desk, causing the holo-screen to flicker and die midway through Nya's moping. He let out a cough that he had kept bottled up as he turned his chair slightly, his gloved fingers scraping along the smooth metal of his desk.

Vahl tilted her head, curious at Eyzn's behavior. "Was there something wrong with the footage?"

It took a noticeable amount of time for Eyzn to respond as he considered his next words, his face starting to fume as he hunched over in his seat.

"I thought she hated him," he muttered. "Nya believes that Sam killed her child, which was the cause of the rift between them in the first place. So why is it that," – _cough, cough_ —"she is sobbing her eyes out on this vid, wishing that she was back _with_ him?!"

Vahl shook her head thickly. "It didn't look like that to me."

"Don't be an idiot!" Eyzn snarled as he shot to his feet, only to bend over a bit as another bout of coughing sprung up upon him. "Did you not watch the same footage I just did?! Nya very explicitly wanted Sam to be back with her! Clearly I allowed too much time to pass between them as they very well might have repaired their relationship had I not intervened."

A stab of pain in Eyzn's stomach caused him to lean against his desk. He put a hand against his gut and closed his eyes, squeezing a few tears out, as he willed the knots to unclench and allow him to breathe. Vahl, noticing that Eyzn was clearly pained, tried to walk over to help but Eyzn threw out a hand, halting her in place.

"Your antibiotics-," Vahl began.

"-Aren't helping," Eyzn wheezed before he stood back up straight. "You're going to have to get another specialized type. Penicillins are barely making a dent in this sickness. Get some quinolones next time. They have a broad spectrum of," _–cough, cough-,_ "ah, forget it. Just get the right Ancestors-be-damned meds, will you?"

Eyzn pried the OCD out of its slot and cupped the disk in his hand for a bit, appraising it. He hefted the small object before tossing it to Vahl, who barely managed to catch the wayward disc with both hands.

"So disappointing," Eyzn sighed as he stared at the empty space the vid had occupied on his desk. "To see my sister crying like a stupid, scared little girl. You should have seen her back on Rannoch, Vahl. She was… fearless, confident back then – there was a _fire_ about her. Now… after watching her blubber over her missing husband and her… dead kid, you can't imagine just how discouraged that makes me. I wasn't expecting to feel this way, in all honesty, but to see such a shift in her behavior, such an abandonment of potential, I can't help but feel like it's a waste."

"So what use does she have anymore?" Vahl hissed as she shoved the OCD back into a pocket at her waist. "Let me kill her, Eyzn. If you think that this is all we're going to get out of her, she can't help us break the human anymore."

Eyzn whirled his head, the glow of the security screens briefly catching the outline of his face as it was transposed against the illuminated background. His eyes fluttered past his blue visor and his movements became jerkier as he stumbled towards his lackey.

"You... are _not_ to kill Nya just yet," he warned. "She may still have some use left in her. How, I have no idea, but I'm not about to throw away a resource that might prove to be critical at the opportune moment."

"She's just a stupid bitch. If I kill her you will have even more material to use on the human."

"But I still have more to show Sam!" Eyzn slammed a fist on the table, causing Vahl to flinch. "Nya doesn't die until I say so! Not until I am finally done with the human! I… need to look in his eyes… when… when he sees that-,"

Whatever he was intending to show Sam went unvoiced as Eyzn sagged once more as he hacked up a lung. This time, Vahl stood where she was, adopting a disinterested pose, as she watched Eyzn struggle for air. Once the coughing attack had finally faded, Vahl waited until Eyzn made eye contact before she spoke again, but she made sure to lower her voice a couple of notches in volume, but enunciated her syllables more to show her intent.

"You don't have to stall anymore. It is _over_ , Eyzn. You've won. Just play your final card and show the human the true extent of your wrath! He has been broken by now. You're only doing damage to yourself by letting this charade linger longer than it should."

Silver eyes shifted behind a cloudy barrier. " _Charade_ , is it?" Eyzn uttered hoarsely after he stifled one last cough before stalking towards Vahl. "It may seem like a game to you, Vahl, but I've been waiting a long time for this moment. I've planned out to the most miniscule detail exactly how I'm going to take care of Sam and I don't need your opinion on how to accomplish it!"

Eyzn quickly reached out and grabbed at the hem of Vahl's hood, yanking her down a couple inches. The woman loudly gulped – Eyzn had never behaved this violently towards her before.

"Let me tell you _exactly_ what you're going to do," Eyzn rasped as he bent closer to the cowed woman. "You're going to do what you're told, keep your mouth shut, and let me handle this on _my_ terms. Nya is not to be killed, nor is Sam, until I deem it so. I will let you know when that time comes but until then, put those thoughts out of your mind… and tell Sievra to keep up the monitoring."

As soon as Eyzn released his grip on her hood, Vahl backed up a step, caught in astonishment at Eyzn's brutal nature. Stumbling a bit, she hightailed it out of the room, leaving Eyzn alone again to watch his prisoner in peace.

* * *

 _Meanwhile_

Sometimes I wondered if Ahrun thought that I was dumber than a bag of hammers. For one, if the kid had seriously wanted to keep a secret in the Shed, then he had already made a grievous mistake by trying to keep it from the one person who knew more secrets than anyone else in this godforsaken hole. I had to keep in mind that Ahrun might not have been trying to keep what he had been sharing to anyone who had been listening to his stories a secret at all, at least from me, but everyone else was comparatively terrible at trying to hide the new knowledge that they had just been handed.

How did I know that Ahrun was responsible? Because he had been the only one that I had uttered this type of information to. Names that only two people in this room should have known. They came at me in collections of whispers, sheathed murmurs that breathily hinted at awe and fear. Understanding and cold calculation.

Fear. And respect.

" _Ahto…"_

"… _Da'var…"_

" _Nya…"_

"… _his wife…"_

"… _Ahto…"_

"… _quarian…_

"… _Nya…"_

Did Ahrun think that I would not find out? Word of my exploits had leaked as if I had dripped them through a sieve. There could only have been one other source and unless someone had been secretly recording me as I had recounted the broad strokes of my tale, there was really only one person that I could trace this leak to.

And it all came back to Ahrun.

I let the rumors swirl around for a week while I continued to contemplate over how I should approach this. My initial thought when I had discovered this unfortunate development was to simply grab Ahrun and loudly ream him out in front of everyone, but I had to force myself to calm down and approach this a bit more logically rather than operate on pure instinct. I had enough on my plate as it was.

Nya. She constantly flooded my head, infected my brain, strangled my thoughts. I could not get away from her after knowing what she did to me, even in the Shed. All this time, the entire reason I was in the Shed was because of her betrayal. A betrayal for something that did not even exist. I could not even cry for her or even muster the will to conjure images of her at my feet, beseeching me for mercy. She was just a blank spot in my mind, one big question mark. Eyzn had shown me the evidence of her treachery and had provided proof that he did not doctor a single word… but still I wondered, could that scene be put in a different light if I were to question Nya myself?

Wishful thinking, that. I still had no plan and no hope of even escaping this prison. Sooner or later, I was going to have to force myself to let go of Nya, for I knew that my story would end in a matter of weeks, perhaps days. What else was there for me to live for, now that everything I had held dear had finally been destroyed? I had lost my wife and my child. The only thing I had left to lose was my life.

Right now, it was something I was willing to part with.

Eyzn was letting me stew since our last conversation, I guessed. No doubt letting me twist the knife deeper into my own wound. The days all blurred together as this raw, gaping hole continued to open up within me – a hunger that could not be satiated. What it sought, I did not know. All I had was this ever growing pain that festered and grew more and more unbearable as the days went on.

It was the pain of my failure. My ignorance. My arrogance.

I had killed my own family.

It had to end.

I had to die.

* * *

The morning (or evening, or night – time was hard to discern in the Shed) I had decided to take matters into my own hands started with a rather weird encounter. I had chosen a distant cot, a glorified hammock made out of an itchy blanket stretched atop a flimsy scaffolding, upon which to rest my head for a few hours. Only when I awoke from my last planned nap ever, I found that there was a quarian standing over me.

This was not any quarian that I recognized right off the bat, but I did realize that this particular quarian was adorned with the sort of armored touches that denoted his allegiance to Eyzn. This was odd, usually the guards preferred to stay up top on the catwalks. Why was this one here next to me?

Had Eyzn somehow figured out my plan and was going to torture me again in an effort to dissuade me?

Still temporarily paralyzed from my sleep to even mount a fight, I resorted to quietly expelling a sigh as I looked straight at the quarian's mask in an attempt to peer into his eyes. For some reason, I was having no such luck. Usually, it was not terribly difficult for me to glimpse the twin motes of pearl lights through the translucent visor, but this time… I couldn't see anything.

"Well?" I groaned as my back arched in a stretch, still staring intensely at the quarian. "Does your boss have something new awaiting me?"

The guard simply lifted a hand, a syringe with a clear liquid delicately trapped in between three fingers.

"Not exactly," the quarian whispered, a deep, grating noise.

He then quickly jabbed the miniscule point into a vein onto my neck before I had a chance to comprehend the action. I winced as I felt a small pinch, but it lasted for only a second. There was an uncomfortable squirming sensation underneath my skin now and I could taste metal on my tongue.

"What…" I coughed as I started to relax from the shot, "…the hell was that?"

The quarian guard stood back up and placed the empty syringe in a pocket after breaking off the pointed tip.

"Something necessary," the quarian's unusually deep voice croaked before he quickly stalked off and disappeared behind a side door, once again leaving me with more questions than answers. Eyzn had injected me with chemicals before, but instead of poisons, Eyzn so thoughtfully had taken it upon himself to provide me with vaccines. He didn't want his prize to die of an illness anytime soon.

It took me a few minutes to finally sit up from my crummy cot after willing the fatigue away. Rubbing at my neck where I had felt the needle prick me, I walked into the main hall, finding that it was already pretty much occupied by the bulk of the prisoners.

I spotted Ahrun right away, in the middle of what appeared to be him once again recounting my story to a group of saps that had nothing else better to do. We unintentionally locked eyes across the room, some kind of silent acknowledgement or connection that enabled us to enter this moment together. I don't know how, maybe it was my grave expression, but somehow Ahrun seemed to sense that something was amiss and immediately broke off from the group that he was addressing to make a beeline straight for me.

Setting my jaw with a tight huff, I continued on my path towards the center of the room, trying desperately to prepare myself to ignore the oncoming Ahrun. He had been trying to talk to me for days on end and I had done whatever was in my power to not regard a word he was saying. He would not understand the intimate and subtle tidings that had overturned my life, nor would he understand how I had come to this final decision.

No, it was for the best that Ahrun remain in the dark. Maybe that way he could keep his own soul intact. Better for some pieces of the puzzle to remain unfound.

He was a smart kid. He would realize sooner or later that it was my love for Nya that had been my strongest trait… and also my biggest weakness. Ahrun would soon come to know that it had been my love that had started my downfall.

"Da'var!" Ahrun panted as he finally caught up to me, but I did not answer. Instead, I strode past the rows of tables, my heels clacking on cold tile as the barest waft of stale air fluttered over my arms.

Ahrun reached out a hand and touched my shoulder for the tiniest of moments. As if a spark had spread from the contact to ripple throughout my body, I suddenly whirled and grabbed two fistfuls of Ahrun's suit and brought his helmeted head to within inches of my own snarling face.

"Wh-Wha-?" Ahrun fumbled, shocked at the violence on display.

"I know what you did," I grunted into Ahrun's face, my breath close enough to mist on the quarian's visor. "You think I don't hear the stuff you've been saying? I'm not a fool, Ahrun… and I'm certainly not ignorant."

"I… never said that you were," Ahrun breathed, his timid eyes gradually becoming heavier with understanding. There was no resistance – I did not need to interrogate him as to who leaked my story. He and I both knew that the source of all this had to be him, there was no one else who fit the description.

"You've been telling everyone and their mother about me. My family. My life. _Why?!"_

Ahrun jerked in my grip, indignant. "You never specified that what you were saying to me was private!"

Okay, he had a point there. Clearly I was assuming that such a matter had been an unspoken rule between us. How I wished that I had learned to limit my assumptions throughout my life a little better.

"Besides," Ahrun continued, "everyone here… they didn't know a thing about you! They were curious, indignant at your mere presence – can you blame them?"

"Does their curiosity give you the right to spill all that I've told you?" I countered with a grimace, but I released my hold on the man, allowing him to take a careful step back as he smoothed out the wrinkles on his hexagonally-patterned suit.

"They have the right to know why they're here in the first place!" Ahrun shot back. "You told me that all of this was just a means to an end for Eyzn to get rid of you! Shouldn't everyone here be entitled to understand why they've been treated like livestock?"

"And so you've spread my sorry tale to every single corner of this building. All I ever hear now when I walk around is the whispers that you've started, mentioning me, my child, and my wife. I can't go anywhere anymore without being reminded of my mistakes! Is this what you intended for me?!"

"Whatever it was, it's a damn sight better than what you've intended for yourself! I'm not blind either, Da'var! I know what you're about to do. You want to die. You want to finally end it, for Eyzn to get what he wants."

I was not surprised by Ahrun deciphering my intentions, yet I could not hide the sneer that crossed my face.

"Tell me what I have to live for, then. Who among us truly cares if I get to live to see another day?"

"We _all_ do," Ahrun fumed as he prodded a finger into my chest, throwing me off balance. "Everyone I've talked to wants to see you freed, you selfish human. We all sympathize with you, yet you're so hell-bent on destroying yourself that you're completely missing the bigger picture – what you _mean_ to everyone here."

Now I was free to laugh heartily. "I've heard some bullshit in my time, pal, but that might just take the cake."

Ahrun was now staring at me like he was about to punch me in the face, his eyes lit with a mixture of horror and frustration. It must have been quite an effort, but he managed to grasp the collar of my shirt in his despondency without hitting me whatsoever.

"It's all a joke to you, isn't it?" the quarian uttered through a hoarse throat. "You seriously believe that dying will change anything around here? If you truly do think that, then you're not brave at all – you're a coward. Why do you think no one around here has bothered to call you by your name, or even _ask_ for it? Your _real_ name, I mean. To us, you're _Ahto Da'var_. Does that not mean anything to you?"

"Oh, _please_ ," I grumbled, but I did not slap Ahrun's hand away. Instead I rolled my eyes up at the ceiling. "Ahto Da'var is nothing more than a farce, some crap that a particularly dramatic quarian made the fuck up out of nowhere. I never wanted to be… what was it? ' _Our guiding armor?_ ' That was just some hokey old horseshit that gave me the justification to act like the biggest asshole in this place. I never said I was worthy of the name, I just accepted it because it was an identity that enabled me to look at myself in the mirror every day. Da'var was nothing but a window into a life that I wanted but I never got, okay?!"

Ahrun now clasped my shoulder as his hand that was on my shirt tightened even harder. "What you think of the name, no matter how much it's the truth, means nothing to everyone here. They've all seen the evidence of you keeping everyone's moods tempered, preventing them from hurting our own in this place. They know how much pain you've resisted in Eyzn's clutches thus far. To give in now is to destroy that last shred of hope that everyone here is holding onto." Ahrun took such a deep breath that his fingers began tingling. "Besides… that's only part of the meaning that you've said."

"Huh?" I blinked in confusion. "Part of the meaning of what?"

"Of your name. Ahto Da'var. ' _Our guiding armor_ ' is only part of the translation to your language. Khelish names and phrases contain more than one simple meaning – usually there's a secondary subtext to each sentence that we say. Ahto Da'var denotes you as more than a determined individual. You are a protector. You are… _our patriarch_."

With that, Ahrun finally let go of me, now seeming smaller than ever. The halogen lighting from above made the quarian's suit appear bone-white, and I felt a sudden chill on my skin, causing me to shiver. The crowd of quarians that were scattered around the two of us, drew only fleeting glances in our direction, but even in this space where the tiniest of noises can echo loudly, I found myself temporarily deafened.

"Do what you think is best," Ahrun scowled, as he left me alone.

Shakily, I backed away, throat now clogged, but with my will still intact. Ahrun continued to silently plead at me, shaking his head for me not to do this, to not throw my life away needlessly. Even after that revelation, would that still mean that I had something tying me down here?

Perhaps it meant that, albeit unintentionally, I held importance in someone's mind. It puzzled me, but I've been privy to many surprises as of late. I was wary of enduring any more.

Finally turning away from Ahrun, legs feeling like they were wearing concrete shoes, I trudged my way forward, having to step around an aluminum table for me to reach the center of the huge room, a place where no other people languished. I had maybe a radius of about ten meters clear of objects and people – all to myself. I spread out my arms for one final stretch, savoring the feel of my tendons and hamstrings getting pulled to their limits, eliciting a welcome burn.

It's the small things in life that bring the greatest pleasures.

Rows and rows of cameras all focused on me. I could tell because there was a simultaneous whir as each one of the black fixtures all tried to center upon me standing in the center of the bare circle, posture straight and determined, eyes set with a hard glint.

 _All right you bastard_ , I shouted in my head. _Talk to me. Open that big mouth of yours again. Take me down if you have it in you._

Right on cue, an unseen loudspeaker crackled to life. The person behind the cameras had indeed been watching, the scum.

" _Still as masochistic as ever, 'Da'var?_ '" I heard Eyzn's voice slither through layers of electronically processed filters as he no doubt appraised me from afar. " _You're looking rather spry compared to the last time I saw you. You were sniveling and crying like a little bitch and yet here you are, back for more. What will it take to get through your thick skull that you've lost? You're mine! You gave me the license to end your life on a whim! Do you not remember?!_ "

A sigh escaped through clenched teeth. "I remember," I murmured. "I remember… and I don't care."

" _Why put yourself through this? Is it because," -cough, cough- "that you are still feeling unfulfilled? All it takes is a simple whisper from me and your life will be snuffed out. Do you not understand the power I have over you?"_

"Then get it over with already, you pussy," I shouted up into the rafters, my voice taking on a godly quality in the cavernous room, eliciting multiple stares from the rest of the prisoners. "Come down here and show me you have the balls to end this yourself."

The ugly voice chuckled on the other end, nervously putting every quarian in the building on edge, before a hideous cough interrupted the revelry.

" _Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?_ " Eyzn snickered. " _No doubt you'd relish the chance to have this play out man to man… but you're no man. You're not even human anymore. You're a pitiful, broken shell! You have nothing! I don't gain anything by killing you!_ "

Slowly, my face fell in a sheet of disappointment, my chest heaving with deep breaths. "Just what I expected. I knew you didn't have it in you," I studied the ground before I made a deliberate scratching gesture near the collar of my shirt – a subtle taunt. "All the time I've known you, you could never finish what you started. Just too stupid to see your plans through… and you've never learned your lesson."

I then looked up with a crazed grin. "You were always pathetic, you fuck."

I would like to imagine, in the long silence that followed, that Eyzn's childlike face had twisted in all directions, demonstrating the full spectrum of hate and anger that could be directed at one particular person. However, with more pertinent matters on my mind, such as my upcoming death, I felt remarkably clear, my thoughts having been drained of any distractions.

Yet I still allowed my tiny smile to linger.

" _Pathetic, am I?_ _Then_ …" Eyzn finally panted over the speakers, _"…I will prove to you, once and for all, that you are… and will always be… broken!"_

There was a harsh wrenching sound of metal hinges denying the application of force, before a low whistle split the air. I felt the impact on the ground a nanosecond before I heard the metallic thump. Dust billowed into my face and I waved away after coughing a bit. My throat trembled in fear but I swallowed down the taste of bile just before a piercing red light scythed its way through the debris.

A roaring, seven-beat warble filled my ears.

The geth prime slowly stood up straight from where it had landed upon the ground just feet in front of me, loud whirring coming from its servos. The dust clouds parted to allow the two and a half meter tall synthetic to appear like a demigod of old, with rings of light halos streaming all around it. The prime's red armor was polished and highly reflective. Its limber fingers were curled, each appendage having enough strength to snap bone as casually as one could tear paper.

I knew firsthand what this prime, Geth, was capable of, having been at its mercy multiple times already.

But that did not mean that I was going to make things easy for it.

"Right," I muttered as I shook out my arms, tensing my body as I stared at the prime expectantly. "Your move, then."

 _Kill me if you can_ , was what I left unsaid between us.

Without wasting time, Geth lunged at me, its fingers stretched wide out. It only needed to grab hold of me to render me lame with those limb-crunching hands that it possessed. Quickly, I ducked and rolled out of the way, safely passing underneath the reach of the massively strong synthetic. A clean miss, but that would not be enough to survive. I flopped onto my back after exiting the roll and, in a bout of brazen confidence, lashed my foot out and caught Geth perfectly on the side of its right knee.

Geth warbled, perhaps in anger, and stumbled a bit from the kick but did not fall. My face fell slightly at that, but I had to realize that I would never be strong enough to throw such an enormous machine like this prime off-balance. My body, powerful as it was, could not execute any sort of physical attack to do the synthetic any damage. I could only dart out of harm's way since I had no chance of besting this beast in a straight up fight.

I tried not to think about the fact that I was going to tire at some point. The prime, being unable to get fatigued, would then cripple me at that fateful moment.

Maybe then I could have a death worth talking about.

The prime straightened, its feet leaving deep scratches into the tile with an ear-splitting shriek. It looked down upon me as if I were an insect that needed squashing, and stomped its leg down. Quite hard.

The floor shook and cracks immediately spread out in a foot-long radius from Geth's heel. I had rolled out of the way just in time to avoid getting pulverized, but Geth was soon on me again, smashing its foot down again and again, the vibrations threatening to throw me up in the air, shards of tile flying up from the bedrock foundation in a flurry of dust.

" _You have no chance!_ " Eyzn cackled from his safe room. " _Just give up already! It will be over soon!_ "

"Shut the fuck up!" I snarled as I sprang to my feet after Geth momentarily paused to bring its center of gravity back under control. I was about to die, but I would be damned if I had to have my own death narrated by that asshole up top.

There was an aluminum table between me and Geth now, but I knew that was merely an annoyance to the synthetic at best. Just as predicted, a ton of metal and plastic alloys leaped half a meter into the air only to land on the flimsy barrier, cracking it in half as the lightweight material bent like a cheap spoon. Geth took a swipe at me with its hand, so fast it became a crimson blur, but the blow just barely missed my chest. If it had hit, half my ribs would have been shattered. The strike was nearly instantaneous that the rush of air left in the wake of the actual swipe ruffled my shirt. Any faster and my eardrums would have been ruptured by a sonic boom.

The audience of quarians now clustered in a rough circle around us, the combatants, with bated breath. The stomping of boots upon grating accompanied the gladiatorial match – guards on the catwalks with their weapons aimed somewhat in my direction. I could hear Ahrun screaming my name, telling me to lie down and take the punishment. _No chance, kid,_ I thought with a tender remorse. I've submitted myself to enough pain at the hands of others. I was going to finish this out my way.

I bent down to pick up a table leg that had been broken off. I hefted it like a baseball bat, but it also shook with my uncertainty. Geth did not seem to be intimidated in the slightest, as it just kept plodding toward me with its patient determination. It unleashed its distinctive seven-beat warble again, the bass reverberations plunging into my bones and rattling them.

Geth, as it turned out, was simply programmed. It followed only the most basic of commands that its software was comprised of – probably reflective of Eyzn's relative lack of programming skills. Geth, apparently, did not have very many combat suites that focused on alternating its style of attack as it seemed to be content with only proceeding in a lumbering pace and to swing its unwieldy arms every which way in the hopes that it would catch up to my position and eventually overpower me.

It was my bet that this routine could make the prime's maneuvers somewhat predictable.

I let Geth get within a couple more feet of me so that it would begin another attack in earnest. As expected, the prime raised an arm up high, fingers hooked to rake me open, and hurled its arm down. I darted around the blow and, when I was sure that I was safe for the moment, I swung the aluminum table leg at the synthetic's side with all my might, punctuating it with a cry of victory.

It didn't work. The aluminum leg left only a minor gouge in the prime's red armor before it snapped completely in half. What a crummy piece of construction this was!

I stared stupidly at my shortened weapon while the prime slowly rotated upon its axis to face me. Its three glowing optics levelled straight at my face and the synthetic's head was tilted as if the prime was saying, " _Did you really expect that to work, you moron?_ "

Geth then whirled for another blow, one that I was not yet ready for, as I still had been bemoaning my shitty luck. For some reason, the prime's strike had not been centered properly and the back of the synthetic's hand clipped my shoulder.

I grunted as my soft body was pummeled by an unyielding force.

There was enough power behind the wallop itself to spin me around and to fall to the floor quite heavily. My shoulder felt numb for a few seconds before a throbbing pain steadily arrived to replace it. I fell short of breath, helpless as my vision went blurry while the blobby red outline of Geth crept closer and closer to deal the final blow.

I used my good arm to try to drag myself away from the encroaching geth, but it was no use. I was too slow in my efforts to escape, no matter how much I had worked out over the months. As drool dribbled down my chin in my desperation, I looked out into the faceless crowd of quarians silently watching me. I wanted to yell at them, curse them, besmirch them for standing by while I was about to be torn apart. The one notable demonstration of defiance in their midst and all of them chose to watch it like a Monday night football game.

Getting up on my knees, though, I simply shook my head as I coughed, finding it hard to breathe. On their heads, be it. At least they would know I went out swinging.

Eyzn was still chortling up above, a faceless demon reveling in my misery.

" _What a miserable performance! Hardly worth the time to bring good old Geth out. One hit and you're out already? Heh, maybe I should make an example of your complete and utter loss. I'll just have to settle for one of your arms as a souvenir."_

There was a fizzing noise as Geth brought the pulse cannon around from its position upon its back, now connected to the synthetic's forearm. An aqua green light began to warm from within the barrel, aimed squarely at my shoulder. Geth took another gigantic stride forward towards where I was kneeling upon the ground to bring the cannon up to point-blank range. From this distance, the prime would be able to blast my arm off cleanly, leaving only a cauterized stump behind.

I should have known that Eyzn would not send his pet out simply to kill me. I still represented a source of much enjoyment for him. However… if I moved my body at the worst possible moment, at the point when Geth fired its cannon, I could maybe make it so that the beam could hit me in an area that was decidedly more fatal.

How I wished to remain alive long enough for Eyzn to realize that I had died before he could impart any more of his twisted cravings on me. His scream of unbridled rage was surprisingly easy to imagine.

A blast of heat hit my face. I shut my eyes, dreading the scent of my own burning flesh. The light from the cannon reached a blinding illumination. I readied myself, preparing to twist my body at the last possible moment. I wanted the bolt to hit me in the chest. It would shear through flesh, organs, and bone in an instant. I would die in moments, leaving Eyzn with nothing.

It would be the last laugh that I could possibly dole out.

 _Maybe you'll be judged better in the afterlife, Nya._

The fizzing escalated into a full-blown whine and finally a howl as the cannon prepared to fire. The heat was so intense that my skin felt like it was bubbling and melting off my bones. I felt blistered and raw in the light and I gritted my teeth, shouting a wordless note in the face of my reckoning.

Tears streamed from my eyes.

Eyzn roared in laughter.

Geth warbled its note and finally…

…fired.

The concussive blast from an explosion threw me back down to the ground, but the direction of the blast itself was from… above me? Regardless, my stomach was pressed onto the floor uncomfortably and I felt something wet coat my upper lip. The explosion had been so close the waves of pressure had ruptured something in my nose, causing it to start diffusing blood.

Spitting out the foul substance, I opened my eyes and tried as hard as I was able to manage to focus on my surroundings.

My back felt hot, for some reason. Bits of flaming metal had apparently bounced onto me. Frantically, I wiped a hand to scurry away any lingering embers. There was also a panicked screaming in the air – Eyzn's voice? Was I not dead? Struggling to lift myself up on locked limbs, I clawed my way out of this throttling myopia, the ringing in my ears beginning to fade as well, as I realized that my body was miraculously still intact.

"H-… How?" I whispered as I stared at my own two hands before I looked up to where the prime had been standing inches away.

 _Standing_ being the key word.

The prime was now lying on its back, squealing all sorts of unintelligible noises, as I saw to my astonishment that at least six quarians had tackled the geth when it had not been looking and while it was just about to fire upon me, temporarily pinning it down to the floor. Ahrun himself was riding Geth's gun arm, holding it down and preventing it from firing at anyone else.

All of them… these quarians… they did this to _help_ me.

They really did want to see me go free.

" _GET UP!"_ Eyzn was screeching from his safe room at the writhing synthetic. " _Get up, you stupid geth! GET UP!_ "

"Go!" Ahrun screamed from his position while the armored prime underneath him yelped in surprise, trying to throw off its restrainers. " _RUN!_ "

 _Run? Run where?_ I wanted to shout. Where could I possibly go that the prime could not reach? I was about to shoot back my interpretation of the situation's futility but Ahrun was furiously tilting his head in the direction that he wanted me to look, so I followed.

And beheld a curious sight.

When Ahrun and the rest of the quarians had tackled Geth to the floor, they had done so at the most opportune and fortunate moment possible. They had aimed low, running headlong into the prime's legs, which knocked it off its center of balance and caused it to fall in the first place. The first instinct for a falling being to do, organic or synthetic, is to flail their arms to somehow get their center of gravity back on track. But because one of Geth's arms had a pulse cannon strapped to it, and because it had just been about to fire upon me, the prime had already initiated the firing sequence, sending a bolt of plasma careening up to the ceiling. That had caused the initial explosion and shower of molten metal bits, but it had also done more than create a little chaos.

The plasma bolt had sliced completely through several of the bolts holding a section of the catwalks in place. With the rest of the structure unable to support the full weight of the metal supports, a long portion of the catwalks had collapsed to the floor, but one half of the fractured section remained attached at the other end, creating a steep incline that led to the forbidden areas just over our heads.

It was, indubitably, a way out of here.

The shattered bodies of quarian guards lay strewn all over the place, presumably the ones who had been in the unfortunate position of residing upon the catwalk when it had toppled to the ground. I paid them little mind as I, after some difficulty, rose to my feet and began to limp towards the black metal incline, an odd feeling surging in my chest.

The limp escalated into a run. My pained face vanished for a grin to take its place, despite the blood streaming around my mouth.

For the first time ever, I truly did have hope.

" _NO!_ " Eyzn screamed as he saw what I was going to do, his voice nearly rupturing my eardrums. " _Stop him! Stop the bosh'tet! Kill him if you have to! KILL THAT MAN!_ "

As forceful as Eyzn was making himself out to be, there was not much that his lackeys could do about it. Smoke had filled a good portion of the air when Geth's errant bolt had exploded part of the Shed, making visibility rather difficult. Also, the guards were not professionals, so they were considerably more disoriented when being placed in a stressful situation such as this.

I only had one chance before they recovered.

With a leap, I hit the heavily angled catwalk hard, but the pain meant nothing to me at this point. My shoes slipped on the steeply inclined surface, but I was able to wedge them where the actual grated surface met the handrail posts. I gripped the thin metal rails and hauled myself up, one section at a time, my toned arms taking the stress nicely. Blood and smoke mingled on my tongue, in my nose, choking me with a rather oily scent, but I powered on through. Tear-streaked eyes threatened to blind me, but I could continue on simply by touch.

Lift the leg, place it firmly. Reach out with your hand, grasp the railing. Rinse and repeat.

Below me was a swirling conflagration of quarians, colors of all forms mingling all at once, bellowing above the howls of what Eyzn was projecting over the loudspeakers. It sounded like they were chanting something in unison. I even paused for a minute to decipher what they were saying, and my chest filled with an emotional sob as I realized they were cheering… for me.

" _AH-TO DA-VAR! AH-TO DA-VAR!_ " the quarians yelled as one, all watching me climb above them, rising to the top of the Shed, to meet my foes head on in my final act of glory.

I laughed along with them, providing the quarians an acknowledging nod of _noblesse oblige_. Tensile strength flooded each and every muscle strand, energy surging within the very cells that comprised my body. Adrenaline stomped down every tiny agony that imparted itself against me, rendering me full of life.

I kept climbing.

" _AH-TO DA-VAR! AH-TO DA-VAR!"_

" _PA-TRI-ARCH! PA-TRI-ARCH! PA-TRI-ARCH!"_

Just a few more feet to go. I would reach the top in seconds.

" _PA-TRI-ARCH! PA-TRI-ARCH!"_

My arms began to burn deep within the muscle and bone, but I shrugged the feeling off. It was a good burn, a welcome burn. The sensation of accomplishment, of hard work. Never before had I felt so rewarded.

The man who finally clambered his way to the top of the catwalks would not be known as Sam McLeod. To all the quarians who had been witnessing this day, seeing this human rise above them, to climb the shattered constructs of the Shed, would always be Ahto Da'var to them. Their Patriarch. For me, it was easy to think of the past lives that I had previously lived – once as a knight clad in gleaming armor as I stood in a field surrounded by the bloodied corpses of my enemies, and another as a battle-worn soldier in no man's land, all grimed up and exhausted but incredibly proud and thankful to have survived another day in the trenches. Victory to those men must have been the best moment of their lives. I'm proud to say that I could match up to their legacy.

The smoke was reaching noxious levels at this height and was making my sinuses run something fierce, but I didn't care. Even though I was experiencing a burning and runny sensation through every orifice, each square millimeter of my skin feeling as if it had been dipped in electricity, I felt strength surging throughout me.

I felt alive.

I lowered a hand to the catwalk and felt the vibrations shuddering through the metal – footsteps of the guards regaining their bearings. They would be on this position at any moment. It was now or never.

"Da'var!" I heard a familiar voice call from below.

I craned my head over and saw Ahrun clambering up the downed section of catwalk in the exact same fashion that I had. The quarian was extending a hand for leverage, his eyes shining up at me with hope.

Or was that smugness that I detected?

"You devious son of a bitch," I said with a grin as I clasped his hand firmly in mine.

"What can I say?" Ahrun chuckled as I helped heft him onto the level and he bent for a second to catch his breath. "I knew you weren't meant to die here."

A crackle of gunfire then exploded in the air, the gaping room amplifying the noise so greatly that it sounded like it went off near my ear. I dropped to the ground and was about to shout to Ahrun to do the same… until I saw that the quarian's eyes had widened to large proportions behind his visor.

Then he pitched forward in a clumsy fall.

I caught the young man with a gasp, my hands immediately finding the tiny hole in his chest, frayed bits of enviro-suit marking the pit in his body. Warm blood gushed through my fingers and Ahrun shuddered as he tried to take a breath. There was a brief sucking noise – a punctured lung.

I almost screamed for medi-gel but remembered that there was none to be found here. No! This couldn't be! It was so unfair! Tears ran down my face far more powerfully as I took stock of the seemingly tiny body I cradled in my arms. I tried to splutter a few curses, but they all came out incomprehensible as I sobbed over Ahrun's dying form. My hands were now colored dark red, unable to have stemmed the flow of precious lifeblood from the quarian's body.

"Keep… going…" I heard Ahrun croak in my arms, his arms yanking themselves up uselessly.

"No more talking," I uttered, trying to bring my voice under control. "You're… you're going to be fine. Just stay with me a few… a few more minutes."

Ahrun gave a sleepy little laugh. "I… know a lie… when I hear one… Da'var."

I then touched the side of Ahrun's helmet gently, wishing that he could have known the joys of a better life, way beyond the hand he had been dealt.

" _Sam_ ," I corrected with a gentle whisper, the word causing Ahrun's face to relax, the pain already leaving his body. "That's my real name. Sam McLeod."

Ahrun then twisted his arm and I held it with alarm. The quarian was using his last burst of strength before my eyes. I did not have the courage to tell him that his body was going to give out in moments if he kept this up. But when I stared straight at him, I found no anger, no agony. Only peace.

That was enough.

"Even for… the briefest of moments…" Ahrun coughed, his breathing growing weaker and weaker, "…I was free… because of you."

His hand was pressing something into mine, a cold, slender object. The quarian's fingers then started to unclench as the life left him and I hugged his body tighter.

"Ahrun!" I cried.

"Find her… _Sam…_ " Ahrun whispered before his eyes finally shut.

I then felt his body fall limp. The quarian's head lolled in my lap, his eyes calmly shut. He could very well be sleeping in this position.

Ahrun's hand slowly slipped out of my hand, leaving the item he had deposited in my palm clenched between my own blood-stained fingers. Limb trembling, fingers agonizingly locked in place, I wrenched the hand open with a rage-soaked grunt and stared at Ahrun's final gift.

The shank was about five inches in length, made out of aluminum, and sharpened to a deadly point. Ahrun must have broken off one of the superfluous table bits and had been honing it for the past few days. He had kept it hidden, safe until he figured there would be the perfect time to take it out.

And he had entrusted me with this weapon.

There was smoke still billowing around me in puffy clouds rendering visibility down to nearly zero, but I could feel the footsteps of an approaching guard. A wire-thin targeting laser streamed through the murky coating, searching for me. He could have been more than ten feet away from me, but he still could not see me.

Very gently, I set Ahrun's bloodstained body down onto the ground as I gripped the shank in my right hand. I crept forward, rolling on the balls of my feet so as to minimize the vibrations. I grew hot as my palm clenched itself upon the crude weapon, the roughened edges cutting into my skin and drawing more blood to drip to the floor below. The shot that had killed Ahrun had come from this direction – I had no idea if this nearest guard had been the one to do it (as there were still occasional scattered shots reverberating in the area) but he was closest to bear witness to my rampaging anger.

"Show yourself!" the guard suddenly yelled, his voice on the verge of hysteria. He was panicking.

Just a couple feet more.

"As you wish," I whispered, causing a rustling of heels upon metal as the quarian turned in the direction of my voice, but by then it was too late.

I sprang forward as quickly as a wildcat, plunging through the smoke and debris to find myself face to face with a terrified quarian guard. He had not gotten his pistol up to bear, so I reached out with my free hand and shoved it to the side, leaving his stomach open and vulnerable, free for me to shoot my other arm forward and to sink the shank deep into the alien's gut.

It was like I had no control over my own body. This had all come naturally to me, this latest sequence of events. I had not stopped to consider the ramifications of stabbing a person in such a violent manner, but as much as those feelings of horror and disgust tried to convey themselves to me, they were thwarted by the dark veil that I had erected to protect myself from the doubts and the fears that plagued me.

No more. I could no longer sit by and watch.

I had expected the quarian guard to start screaming the moment the sharpened metal punctured his suit and his flesh, but real life tends to play out differently than what fiction might have you believe. Instead, the quarian's breath exited through his lungs rapidly, very much akin to a loud gasp. The alien lost all ability to breathe. I yanked the shank out from the quarian's stomach, and a huge quantity of blood dribbled from the wound, painting the man's enviro-suit red from the waist down. The guard no longer seemed interested in attacking me anymore – he instead looked at the huge gash in his gut with a morbid curiosity, his eyes growing more and more astonished as he realized he was going to die - if not from the stab wound, then from the massive exposure his immune system was now facing.

But that wasn't enough. I still was being operated under some demonic and foreign presence, perhaps the kind of mindset that had resided within me all this time. The quarian, as doomed as he was, was not dead yet. That needed rectifying.

The guard now had a pathetically limp hold on the pistol he had been toting. A Carnifex – a study and precise model. It was an easy affair to rip the weapon from the alien's hands, place my fingers around the worn grip, and have the trigger covered in seconds.

I then lifted the pistol and pressed it square against the quarian's dark gray visor. The alien stopped from looking at his fatal wound and his eyes seemed to cross as they desperately tried to focus on the gaping barrel pressed upon his helmet. His chest fluttered and the cut gurgled – was he trying to say something? A plea for mercy? Maybe if I had been a little more younger and a little more naïve, I would have just left him to bleed out.

The older and more cynical me did not hesitate in pulling the trigger.

The recoiling weapon blocked most of the carnage so I did not get to see the entire impact of what the bullet did to the quarian's head. I did see, once the alien had flopped to the ground, dead as a doornail, that the impact had torn the back of the quarian's helmet completely open, allowing his brains to paint the catwalk a chunky pink color in about an entire meter's spread. A musty odor permeated the air, mingling with the smoky flavor that had already occupied my nostrils.

My mouth was pursed in a flat line as I slowly lowered the arm that held the gun. I continued staring some more at the corpse that I had created. I had shot people before – in the arm, in the leg, and hell, I've even shot up reanimated Reaper monstrosities – but I had never killed a living person. It wasn't so much that I was disturbed from the fact that I had killed someone – I was disturbed at how _detached_ I felt in doing so.

It had been easy, far too easy, to pull that trigger. I thought that being a murderer would change me drastically, would mentally scar me for life so much that I would collapse in conniptions. Yet my pulse was pounding, never slowing, and my hatred continued to run hot.

I felt nothing. Not. One. Thing.

"I'm so sorry… Ahrun," I whispered as I turned back to look at the body that had been laying atop me, my heinous action already forgotten. "You had more faith in me than I did in the end."

The smoke began to part just down the catwalk, past the body of my friend, and I looked up with bated breath. Three more guards, lured by the gunshot, passed through the gaseous barrier, illuminated as if there was a morning sun behind them shimmering through a fine mist. All three were armed, but none of them had their weapons in a ready position. Sloppy. Signs of amateurs.

It was hard for us to miss each other, being that the four of us were the only moving people upon this partially obscured section of the catwalk at this moment. We all froze as our gazes locked – apparently the guards were not really expecting the inevitable situation of a prisoner clambering onto their lines. Mainly, they just paced the rafters while order was kept automatically below them. They had no real combat experience, these were not trained soldiers.

I clenched my hands around the pistol grip of the Carnifex, looking for a sign that the guards could see past Eyzn's indoctrination. They could either let me pass… or end up like their cohort.

But they did nothing. They just stood there and stared.

Then I saw the guard at the front twitch his rifle, as if he was fighting with indecision on whether or not to fire. It turned out to be his downfall.

I saw the twitch and my body reacted all on instinct. In a flash, I brought the pistol up, lined my eye with the sights and fired once, the report causing my ears to ring uncomfortably. The first quarian guard crumpled as blood erupted from his chest, giving me a clear line of sight to the second guard, who also had failed to bring his gun up in time. Once I had adjusted to the recoil of the shot that I had just unleashed, I pulled it again, striking the second guard in the same place and causing the same effect to transpire.

The sequence of shooting those two guards took less than two seconds overall. That still left the third and last guard of the group, who now stood shell-shocked as the bodies of his cohorts lay dead around him, his enviro-suit splattered with the blood of his mates.

"Wait!" he stammered as he saw me shift my aim towards him. "Wait! Don't-,"

It was too late. I fired one last time and a large blood splatter frosted the wall beyond as the bullet penetrated all the way through his helmet and skull. With nothing holding him up anymore, his legs let go and he slumped to the ground, his eyes wide open in surprise through that visor, the back of his head completely missing.

If killing one person had failed to provoke a reaction within me, then adding three more to my resume was bound to have the same effect. Indeed it did, because I felt an odd feeling of emptiness open up in me. It was sort of a cold, professional kind of sensation that frosted my limbs, ice water now flowing in my veins. These men… they had meant nothing to me. They had been obstacles and even before I had shot them, they had failed to register as people in my mind.

I was not sorry that I had to kill them.

Perhaps a little more calmly than I would have preferred in hindsight, I racked the slide of the Carnifex to eject the used thermal clip, which flipped end over end onto the grating with a metallic tinkling noise. I slowly breathed out as I fought not to lose my footing on the slippery bloodstains as I stepped over the three bodies, heading towards whatever exit was closest in this place.

I had made it perhaps a dozen paces before that hateful noise broke out over the intercom once again.

" _Well done, Sam! Well done indeed!_ " Eyzn seemed to be enjoying himself quite immensely, which definitely was not a good sign. " _You're a natural! On top of that, you've helped me weed out the weaklings that I had accrued. A terrible oversight on my part, but it looks like you've done some of my work for me!_ "

"Damn you, you prick," I said to myself, bemoaning my loss of innocence.

A doorway was just starting to reveal itself to me through the smog, just past a row of several beams anchoring the catwalk to the ceiling. I picked up the pace, holding the pistol out just in case I needed to use it again.

Another crackle of the loudspeaker. " _Oh… surely you don't believe it's going to be that easy for you? You don't have any more friends to save your sorry hide this time. Get ready, Sam. Heeeeeere it comes!"_

The catwalk then shook so heavily that I felt that I was about to be thrown off. Hastily I clutched at a nearby railing, the reverberations of the metal surface rattling my bones around in their joints. It was still too hazy to make anything out in this place and I began to hyperventilate as static electricity built along my back.

A powerful seven-note warble shrieked behind me.

 _You have got to be kidding me..._

I turned in dread to find the gleaming geth prime standing a couple meters away from me, having jumped _three stories_ up to where I was now. Geth, now having shaken off the cadre of quarians that had kept it pinned, centered all three of its optics upon me as it slowly prepared its chassis, readying to take me apart.

Didn't I just finish running from this thing already?

"Oh, shit," I groaned before I snapped my gun up and laid out a trio of shots in rapid succession, the gun bucking in my hand each time like a wild bull.

I might as well have been throwing paper balls at it. The Carnifex, as powerful as it was, was ineffective against the prime's insanely strong shields, which billowed in gentle folds as the impacts of the bullets slammed uselessly against the transparent barrier. I was going to need a machine gun to even make a dent in this thing. This pistol alone did not have what it took to accomplish the job. It was only when the geth roared its long note again while its plasma cannon began priming did I finally follow my gut instinct and run like hell for the door.

I had not gotten all that far before I heard a ferocious spitting noise and a nauseating aqua light began to emit from behind me. Recognizing that I was about to be fired upon, I threw myself to the floor just in time as another plasma bolt from Geth's caster shot just over me. The bolt itself chewed through metal supports and even a quarian guard who had been hapless enough to have stood in the wrong place at the wrong time. The alien fell to the floor in two pieces, bisected at the waist, cauterized and smoking.

More panicked gunfire joined the ranks as everyone in the area was driven mad by the relentless output of harsh noises. Sparks and wreaths of flame surrounded me, searing my skin as I ran for the door. Bullets chipped at the concrete walls. Power relays exploded in white phosphorus bursts. Torn cables snapped and crackled, emitting yellowish arcs of electricity.

I lowered my shoulder as I charged the door, bellowing a war cry, but the door was automatic and it lazily opened to allow me through. I nearly tripped over myself just getting out of the room but I stumbled back up before I could fall like an oaf.

There was just enough time for me to collect my bearings now that I was in someplace different than the conference hall-sized staging area. I was now in the room about the size of a studio apartment, only this was far more dimly lit, as well as sparsely furnished. By that I mean, it was not furnished at all. I was standing in an empty room, with walls and floors colored sidewalk-gray, and with a pathetic light fixture barely providing enough illumination for me to see where I was going.

Three doors lay ahead of me, one on each wall. There were no signs indicating to me which one led to an exit. It was all guesswork from here on out. I had an okay sense of direction but I knew I was going to be hopeless at trying to mentally map this maze of hallways out. Fuck, this was annoying.

If I was having a hard time in deciding which direction to take, the overall result was expedited when I heard a shattering noise at my back, along with a stream of carbon-soaked air and ashen dust flying towards me.

The gigantic prime now stood in the room with me, having barreled through six solid inches of concrete wall. Its armor had nary a scratch upon it and its feet shoved aside sheared-away bricks as if they were made of styrofoam.

It was still coming to kill me.

I hollered something unintelligible as I made a break for the rightmost door. The prime took another swipe at me but I was already powering through the first threshold, not bothering to see if I could lock the door behind me. Geth, unperturbed by the temporary separation, simply wound up into a jog and tore through the separating wall like a linebacker, bits of rock and dust trailing from its chassis as it kept up its pursuit.

The sight of a geth prime bursting through wall after wall trying to get to me was a fearsome sight. This had to be the most terrifying game of cat-and-mouse ever played. If the prime's aim, apart from ripping me into several pieces, was to scare me shitless by demonstrating that I could not hide from it, then it should consider its mission accomplished. Still I continued to run through a series of rooms that all looked exactly the same: dim, gray, and completely bare (Eyzn had not bothered to touch this place up much), showing that I was either tremendously brave or extremely foolish for delaying the inevitable.

Eyzn was still shouting over the loudspeaker, but I had tuned him out at this point. He was yelling upon deaf ears as I wheeled left and right, taking door after door after door, but only finding the same set of identical rooms lurking endlessly beyond each doorway.

At the next room I entered, I slowed my pace down as I began to fatigue. A mistake, as I was about to learn.

The wall on my left, not the one behind me, blasted apart in a heavy thump as the demonic synthetic _reached_ through the hazy cloud toward my throat. With a yelp, I ducked underneath the outstretched arms and frantically unloaded an entire clip's worth into the prime's side with my pistol. The shield made a rippling noise, but steadily held. The prime, irritated by my resistance, swung its arm and firmly clocked me upside the head, which sent me flying through the air. My back hit the wall hard and I slid to the floor in an upright position with a groan.

I still held the Carnifex in an iron grip. Grunting in pain, I lifted the weapon in a futile attempt to forestall my doom, only to realize that the slide on the pistol was racked wide open: no more thermal clips left available.

Now, this would have spelled doom for most people, but when you're trapped in an inescapable situation, your mind tends to find solutions not immediately obvious upon first glance. The prime did not seem to notice nor care, as it stomped towards me, crushing concrete blocks into gravel underneath its feet.

Grinning maniacally, I clutched the pistol's grip with two hands as I began pulling the trigger repeatedly, setting off bang after bang, orange flashes blinding me while all hearing became white noise in moments. Despite what most people thought was common knowledge, any gun could be fired without thermal clips. The only problem was, without a clip to prevent a weapon from overheating, the entire metal/polymer construction becomes very rapidly hot with each successive shot. After about five bullets sent into Geth's impregnable shields, I heard a hissing noise start to squeal near the barrel of my gun. A steam line had ruptured next to the chemical heat diffusion system - a system which was now malfunctioning and unable to divert the high temperatures away from any delicate area.

The gun itself was filled with explosive chemicals that did not react well to heat. A sprung leak of steam meant that catastrophic failure was imminent. Quickly, I cocked my arm back and _hurled_ the deteriorating pistol towards the prime, with all the force I could muster. The gun tumbled end over end in a perfect arc, impacting right upon the center of Geth's chest as the barrel firmly smacked upon the scuff-less crimson armor.

The leak widened in the pistol and scalding hot steam surrounded the chemical system in nanoseconds. The heat ate through the lightweight metal barrier and boiled the violent liquid inside.

A thunderclap erupted in the tiny room, creating a brilliant burst of scarlet flame as the pistol exploded.

There was a burn in the middle of my vision for a long while, so intense that blinking rapidly hardly helped. The prime stood in the middle of the room, looking intact, with smoke streaming off patches of its armor. The synthetic was frozen for about ten long seconds before it finally stretched its limbs, emitting its trademark seven-note roar as it frantically sought me out, angered at the cheap move that I had played against it. Tiny sparks of static erupted around its form - its shields had finally been overwhelmed and knocked out.

I was about to breathe a final curse until I felt the floor underneath me shudder and finally give out as a series of extraordinarily loud cracks resounded. The prime too looked at where it was standing and witnessed a spiderweb effect as the tortured concrete fractured away directly underfoot. The room had sustained too much abuse to be stable and the prime was standing in the weakest spot.

The prime was too slow on the uptake and it wailed as the floor gave out from underneath it, throwing up its arms in an attempt to claw at the side of the hole that had caved in the middle of the room. In a flash, the prime toppled down a story, a small mushroom cloud of dust puffing out with a lengthy sigh as the geth slipped from view.

I coughed as I stumbled back to my feet, alone again at long last. I backed out of the room as fast as I could allow. I may have gotten rid of the prime for the time being, but I was not stupid enough to wait around until it could recover from its sudden fall. I was dizzy and had a splitting headache, but I had bought myself more time.

My bearings had been lost completely during the frantic chase, but I still maintained enough cognizance to keep my heading in a straight enough line. Fortunately, in my unarmed state, I managed not to run into any more guards or worse, Eyzn himself. I just kept surging through door after door, desperate for a way out until suddenly…

...cool night air wafted against me.

I exhaled in relief and astonishment. With trembling steps, I approached the chain link fence that surrounded the balcony that I now stood upon, my fingers just grasping beyond the barrier fruitlessly as the sounds of nightlife and the gentle scent of urban aggression filled my ears and nose.

It was a cage. A cage that just prevented me from leaving the premises, millimeters away from freedom. The chain fence did have a good reason to be installed there, though. I was still on the third story of… whatever kind of building this was, and it was a pretty long fall to the ground. This was not like the vids where I could possibly survive a drop of that height. Even if I somehow found a way around the fence, I would shatter both legs on the hard pavement below, essentially crippling me.

But what lay beyond the cage… was an amazing sight.

Glowing orange pinpricks simmered through a haze of smoke and ozone with ribbons of white and red twinkling lights searing like veins throughout the gridlocked pastures of a concrete jungle. It was a city. Not just any city, mind you. Even after a hundred and fifty years had passed since I had last laid sight on it, it would be hard to forget the notable skyline that was Los Angeles, even with all of the futuristic buildings that had sprung up to add to the setting in that amount of time.

LA. Hollywood. City of Stars. All this time… I had been so close to home? I had been kept here, on Earth?

A growling anger began to build up inside of me. Eyzn had trapped me in a nameless warehouse, in the middle of one of the planet's largest cities, and no one had thought to look twice at it? My hands shook the fence furiously, creating a loud rattle. I was going to murder that bastard even if it had to be the last thing I ever did.

The next door. I had to find my way out of here.

Tearing myself away from the angelic sight of the wonderful city, I almost skipped along the balcony as I headed for the far door, opposite the way I had come in. This door required physical contact to open instead of detecting movement, so I hammered the requisite plate heartily.

My face then fell as the metal surface immediately parted to reveal a quarian standing on the opposite side.

And they held a pistol in their hands.

There was nothing I could do. No clever quip I could muster. No fancy tricks to pull off. And this quarian knew it.

But what was more shocking was the fact that… I recognized this quarian. On top of that, a name immediately filtered into my head in less than a second. All I had needed was that first glance. It wasn't Eyzn. It was not even Nya.

It was Iroa.

" _You_ ," I breathed as I took a step back, my face sliding into astonishment.

The yellow suited quarian had a grim look in his eyes as he levelled the pistol at my chest. It appeared that he was about to say something, but a quivering throat was rendering speech impossible. Nya's father's limbs shook out of fear, while I felt a warming peace bloom inside me, having finally succumbed to my imminent fate.

Iroa stared at me… and I stared right back at him.

The wind whistled and I caught a strong whiff of sea salt.

I then heard the gun fire.

The heat in my gut became unbearable as I barely flinched from the impact. Sweat began pouring out of me in sheets as I felt every single cell in my body overheat while the life left them all. My hands instinctively covered my stomach as I felt wet fabric, stained from the blood that was presumably squirting out from the wound.

But I did not look down at it. I did not look because I was afraid at what I was going to see.

Tender yet icy fingers grasped at me and the blood that coated my hands felt piping hot as the rest of my body cooled. As blackness fell upon me, I saw the light of Iroa's vocabulator blink, but the words did not register.

I could not curse him. I could not say or think of anything. No matter how much I wanted the memories to come. As much as I tried, I could not bring up the times that I had relished back on Earth with my sister, not of the day I got married, and not of the moments when I made love to Nya. As mightily of an effort I gave, all attempts at nervous system activity were sadly all fruitless.

A single tear beaded in my eye but did not fall.

My knees buckled and finally gave out just as I began to spit up blood, soaking my mouth with its bitter flavor. I saw the ground rushing towards my face at a furious velocity but I awaited the impact with little dread. Just relief. And a sigh.

It could finally be over.

Darkness closed around me in a rushing torrent, strangling me, hugging me, carrying me as I gave one last breath and finally…

...died.

* * *

 **A/N: A new year has dawned and I can already tell that people are going to want to throw all sorts of items at my head now.**

 **I did warn you guys that this was going to be bleak, didn't I?**

 **Playlist:**

 **1st Scuffle With Geth: "Battle Cry" by Audiomachine from the video game _Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare_**

 **Sam Climbs: "Oil Rig" by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL from the film _Man of Steel_**

 **Ahrun Dies/Sam's First Kill: "Kill Them All" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Theme of the Prime, Geth/Chase Through the Shed: "Sahelanthropus Dominion" by Justin Burnett from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**


	14. Chapter 11: On the Backs of Lesser Men

A gentle thread of smoke wisped from the barrel of the pistol. The smell of cordite hung in the air, pungent on its own but lost in the mess of assorted scents given off from the city.

The sound of the explosive report did not echo into the night, but still resonated in the ears of those who had been present nearby. It hummed into eardrums, burrowing and singing its taunting note of deafness.

Lights past the balcony of the warehouse twinkled tauntingly, steady trumpets of horns blared from time to time, and the sky was filled with the streams of overhead ships sailing amongst the stars.

But all of Iroa's concentration was projected not at the distracting cornucopia of stimuli provided by the wondrous backdrop, but at what had been standing in the path of his gun just seconds before.

And how he'd effortlessly stolen the life from it.

Iroa stared down at the human's body as a dark-colored pool of blood steadily began to spread outward from where it lay. It was eerie at how silently the blood pooled and gained in size, soaking into the man's clothes and turning them red. The quarian, trembling in relief, released the breath that he had been holding, a tightened noise that came out as almost a sob. He edged his boots slightly away from the mirror-like red surface, not wanting to stain them in the gore.

On aching legs, the quarian then walked around the corpse of Sam McLeod and knelt down next to his head, the pistol with which he had used to fell the human still clamped tightly in a gloved hand. Iroa reached out with his free limb, surprisingly calm and stable, and gently rolled the human over by the shoulder, who had fallen face-first onto the floor when he had been shot.

It took a lot of effort for Iroa to even move the larger human, his muscles already straining with the effort. But, with some leverage, Iroa had managed to orient the bloody body in his direction.

He could not help but stare with finality.

Sam's eyes were already closed – peacefully shut. He could very well be asleep. His mouth was slightly agape, with no breath escaping from it. The human's hands were loosely clenched around his stomach, the area where the blood was the thickest - the site of the entry wound. The blood from the bullet hole made Sam's clothes sticky and in the dim lighting, the ichor looked almost black.

Iroa clenched a fist but that act passed as quickly as a flicker of flame. There was no point in beating up on the human further. He was already dead. Gone. Finally snuffed out.

Hesitantly, Iroa reached out a hand, about to gently touch Sam's face, but he retracted his arm very quickly, having come to his senses. A phantom stab of pain impacted Iroa in his gut and he gasped as he realized that the agony he had inflicted upon Sam was coming back to haunt him.

He muttered an unintelligible curse and lowered his head to his fist as he clenched his eyes fiercely shut. Iroa's lips moved in a silent string of sentences under his visor, all joints angrily clenched and unyielding.

"I _had_ to do this," Iroa gently whispered to the body as he looked up to the stars, a slight breeze flapping at the hood fixated at the back of his helmet as he tried so badly to look away from Sam's limp form. "Maybe you always understood, Sam. I _had_ to do this."

 _I had to_ , Iroa thought over and over again, unable to stop himself from making excuses. _I had to. I had to. I had to._

Iroa reassured himself of his actions by instilling in his head that Sam had to have known that this was coming. Iroa had _told_ the man so months ago. Tenderly, Iroa finally touched a finger to Sam's forehead, partially in regret, partially in relief. There was no way to tell if the corpse was already bleeding heat now that the human's circulatory systems were no longer functioning, but that was not why Iroa was demonstrating such sensitivity anyway.

Iroa was keen to keep this moment of compassion to himself for the time being. Such weaknesses would only draw consternation from the people who ran this place.

Speaking of...

The elder quarian then looked up as the sounds of opening doors made it past his auditory sensors, exhalations echoing into his visor as he stood back up from Sam's body. A small squad of five more quarians, led by one in a vividly electric-blue enviro-suit entered the balcony area and quickly surrounded Iroa. They all carried weapons but they were not pointed at him, but lazily at the ground once it was clear that there was no immediate threat in the area. Iroa shifted his gaze to each member of the group, his suspicion glowering as he flitted his eyes upon several similarly armored quarians before he finally appraised the blue-suited man that was walking towards him, his arms placed squarely on his hips.

Eyzn gawked squarely at Iroa for a moment before he tilted his head down to look at the corpse of the human. The younger quarian studied the dead man's almost serene expression before glancing down at the wound in his gut that had caused him to expire. Iroa swore that Eyzn wilted for a brief second, but the moment passed too quickly for him to make a determination. Looking back up, Eyzn gave a miniscule sigh, very nearly silent, before he spread his arms out wide and firmly stepped over to embrace his stepfather.

" _Well done_ , Iroa," Eyzn said as he heartedly patted the man's back. Iroa was a bit surprised at the move and froze up in disbelief, too shocked to return the gesture. The two quickly broke apart but Eyzn kept his hands planted upon Iroa's shoulders as he breathed giddily, ecstatic. "You have… no idea what this means to me."

Iroa did not speak for a few seconds as he slit his eyes in doubt and seemed to almost squirm under Eyzn's touch. "What ' _this'_ means to you? Are you referring to me being here… or that you're standing over Sam's body?"

" _Both_ , Iroa. Both."

Eyzn's hands were still resting on Iroa's shoulders and the man's stepfather gave a long hard look at the contact between them.

"Very convenient for you, then," Iroa said mildly. "And for me as well, I suppose. We both got to rid ourselves of a particularly nasty thorn in our side. But I can't help but wonder… was this encounter between me and Sam engineered by you? After all, it seems mightily suspect that, mere minutes after I arrive here, the human in your custody makes an escape attempt."

Eyzn shrugged, but still kept his hands upon Iroa's shoulders. "Would it be a problem if that was the case?"

"Well, was it?" Iroa eyed his stepson.

"Of course not!" Eyzn said genially after a beat. "That's a ridiculous notion! You were here simply because I _wanted_ you to be here, Iroa!"

"I hope you can understand my distrust. The last time we spoke was over a year ago and you were not particularly happy with me back then. I think that my caution is perfectly justified."

"Iroa, Iroa," Eyzn laughed, "The way we parted back on Rannoch… it was not your fault. I was the one blinded with anger that I stupidly pushed you away. After my brief stint on the Citadel, I made sure to keep tabs on you in my spare time, to check up on your status in C-Sec and so forth. I just wanted to be aware of the very second that you could be a free man again. So, when I finally did get the notification that you were allowed to be free of" _-cough, cough-_ "your house arrest, I felt that you should at least come and see what I've done in the meantime."

Iroa stepped away from Eyzn, finally prying the younger man's fingers off of him, as he circled around Sam's body again, his eyes studying the human's form. "You seemed in danger of letting things get out of control when I arrived, no? Not even half an hour had passed by the time I had arrived and already there was a major breakout – Sam here was nearly about to escape had I not arrived to intervene." Iroa's hand twitched in the direction of his pistol. "I only hope… that he found the end he so deserved."

"He _deserved_ much more," Eyzn growled behind Iroa.

"Was all of this - even knowing how much of an annoyance he was - all worth it for you? This chaos, the extent of your planning?"

"You just answered your own,"— _cough, cough_ -"question, Iroa. If there was any reason as to why things got so insane, it's this human right here that you have to thank. We both knew how tenacious he was when he was alive, not to mention what a slippery devil he could be, even when trapped. It was"— _cough, cough_ —"only a matter of time until he could run no further. Heh."

It was hard for Iroa not to notice the bout of hacking that Eyzn was emitting and he tilted his head in the universal expression of curiosity.

"What happened with… this?" Iroa gestured to his face. "You're coughing your lungs out. When did you get ill?"

"It's nothing," Eyzn gritted as he held a hand over his vocabulator to stifle another cough. "Minor reaction to something. Probably a bad seal in my suit. Should be gone in a matter of hours."

Eyzn didn't give Iroa a chance to respond as he knelt down next to Sam's body, having to push past some of his silent guards to get in the position that he wanted. Eyzn stared grimly at the human for a second before he reached out and placed the back of his hand on the right of the human's chest. Confirming for himself that there was no heartbeat, he then moved his hand to the center of Sam's neck, but also did not manage to discover a pulse of any sort. He truly was as dead as a doornail.

"Ah, Sam," Eyzn sighed as he lifted his hand away, the gloved covering speckled with the human's blood. "Or… Ahto Da'var, or whatever the hell you called yourself. Such a ludicrous title. The superstitious young men that you've been hanging around with had to create a hero in their minds, born from their ignorance, but look how their faith was rewarded. How much worth are you as a _dead_ hero? You had greater plans for yourself, but you've simply died an ignominious death. Thus, your heroism is demystified. Heroes go out gloriously, but you went out with a whimper. I suppose it's only fitting that you go out this way. Except…"

Eyzn reached back out and grabbed the corpse's chin, jerking Sam's head toward him. More blood smeared on Eyzn's glove and his fingers dug into the flesh of Sam's face as his grip tightened, altering the look of the human.

"We… were not _done_ yet," Eyzn quietly snarled to the dead man. "I was not finished with you! You just had to be your defiant self one last time, didn't you? You were so determined not to go out by _my_ hands, was that it? Maybe you're laughing at me now from wherever your afterlife is, but I assure you… that I _will_ have the last laugh. If you really are" _-cough, cough-_ "watching me, then by all means watch as I will now proceed to dismantle the last vestiges of your life so that your name will be nothing more than a fleeting memory. I'll erase all traces of your existence now that there's no one to stop me. I'll show you."

Eyzn had been shaking the human's limp head in a fury as the quarian had deliberately enunciated each syllable. Watching Eyzn's hand grow more and more slick with Sam's blood, coupled with the disturbing movements that the quarian was performing with the corpse, a couple of the other quarians in the group were taking glances at each other, becoming more and more disturbed at this macabre bit of dialogue.

"That's enough," Iroa leaned over and yanked at Eyzn's shoulder, pulling him away from Sam's body. "There's no use in getting anything out of the deceased."

Eyzn shot back up and nearly collided his visor into Iroa's. The younger quarian breathed heavily, quivering with broiling emotions that he was quite visibly trying to stomp down lest they all be unleashed at once in a torrid fury. But Eyzn soon relaxed with a chuckle and began wiping away the human's blood from his hand with a soft cloth that he had procured from one of his pockets.

"There was…" Eyzn shook his head as he continued to softly chortle, but faltered from brief glimpses of anger, "…so much more I wished to say. I could have shown him _more_ , Iroa."

"There had been enough suffering, Eyzn."

"Did he?" Eyzn gave a slow blink. "Are you sure? Sam's meddling was what made him responsible for your imprisonment. He helped murder my mother – your _wife_ , and you still think that what Sam had went through was… _enough_?"

The two quarians stood inches apart from the other, each one peering relentlessly for weaknesses. Iroa's calm gaze clashed furiously with Eyzn's own prying one, the younger quarian hardly daring to believe his stepfather's ambivalence.

"Not for him," Iroa corrected. "For you. You did not need to needlessly destroy yourself torturing this man over and over again. That kind of wound never properly heals."

The younger quarian shifted his weight onto his other foot while a nearby light fixture began malfunctioning, spitting out a rapid-fire sequence of white flashes alongside Eyzn's head.

"With all due respect, Iroa," Eyzn started, "I think that you might have forgiven this human way too easily."

Iroa did not give a wry retort at that, nor did Eyzn say anything more as he folded up the now bloodstained cloth after scouring his gloved hand clean. Carefully, he shoved the dirtied cloth back into the pocket from where he had found it, a glow now diffusing from his eyes as the quarian's posture relaxed, his veiled expression softening.

"Iroa," Eyzn threw an arm around his stepfather as he started to lead him away from the human's cooling body, "we don't need to get bogged down on the details of what went on here, no matter how heinous they may be. We're together again! You and I. I've been waiting so long to have you here by my side again and now we can finally get some real progress made."

The elder quarian gave a grunt. "I hope you'll forgive me if I still don't feel assuaged. There is a… dichotomy between this moment and the last moment that we were in the same room that… it's sort of hard for me to rationalize."

Eyzn waved that off. "Emotions run hot in trying times. Okay, I will admit fault for my behavior towards you before you were shoved away into some apartment on the Citadel. For a while, I thought that you did not have my best interests at heart. But I'm no longer angry at you, Iroa. I've learned to accept that the fault was my own this entire time and for that, for abandoning you and" _-cough, cough-_ "making you think I did not care, I apologize." Eyzn's fingers hesitantly touched Iroa's arm as the young man trembled with excitement. "Could you truly believe that I would lose sight of how we used to be together, as a family?"

"I don't know," Iroa shrugged. "I've seen a lot to doubt everything I've ever known lately, to be honest."

Eyzn clapped a hand on Iroa's back. "You'll get used to things in no time. Everything will be back to normal with us. Promise." He then glanced over his shoulder, sensing that his attention was being desired elsewhere. "One moment."

Leaving Iroa alone for a few seconds, Eyzn quickly walked over to Vahl, who had now positioned herself next to Sam's body expectantly. In one hand, she held a rolled up item of what looked like a black plastic tarp. Vahl lifted the object in question as she bent her head close to Eyzn, keeping her voice low.

"I brought the body bag. Now what?"

"Now?" Eyzn eyed Sam's body in amusement as he gestured to him. "Clean the _bosh'tet_ up and put him in it, obviously." Vahl remained silent, which confused Eyzn for a second. "Is there a problem with what I just said?"

Vahl did not move just yet, as she shifted her head back and forth, as if scanning for any eavesdroppers. "It's… Nya, Eyzn."

"Ah," Eyzn sagely nodded. "You still want to kill her. After what we just talked about?"

"It's just… her human husband lies dead! Now you truly have no reason to keep her alive any longer! And I thought perhaps, we can have some fun with her. With this man's body-,"

"-such a sight would truly be traumatizing. Even taking into consideration Nya's relationship..." Eyzn mused, catching onto what Vahl was referring. Clever minx. Sometimes her penchant for sadism rivaled Eyzn's own, he noted with no small amount of amazement. He would have to keep an eye on Vahl's ambitions in the coming days, knowing her desire to go above-and-beyond her given tasks.

"Exactly. I'll _take_ the body and show it to the bitch. That way, upon seeing her dead mate, despite the fact that she may or may not hate the man entirely, she will break down in hysterics and your revenge will finally be complete! Unless… you'd prefer to do it yourself?"

"Hm?" Eyzn muttered, a glassy film sliding away from his eyes as he had been caught in the middle of a serene thought.

"Did you want to kill Nya yourself?" Vahl repeated.

Eyzn nearly jerked in a savage recoil, but managed to control the instinct, especially with Iroa around. Eyzn still knew that Iroa would object to any harm being done to his true daughter, but the things he would not know about Eyzn's involvement would not hurt him. Iroa would come to see Eyzn's point of view eventually, that he was the loyal son that he had always wanted in his life.

There was only room for one child in this family.

"No," Eyzn finally said, shaking off his formally far-away look. "I'm still needed here. Do what you must with her."

Eyzn had given too much hesitation for Vahl to believe the full extent of his reasoning, but she was a devious woman. She was too shrewd to question matters like this, especially when permission had already been given. Only those who were too afraid, too indecisive would lose this opportunity - Vahl did not plan on giving this up at any point.

Satisfied, Vahl made a move to roll out the body bag when, all of a sudden, Eyzn clamped a hand firmly down upon her wrist.

"Whatever you do to her, I don't want to know," he warned her. "But you are to keep everything quick and clean. No mutilation, violation, or anything that can't be mopped up in under an hour. Nothing for the authorities to trace back to me. _Am I understood?_ "

Vahl's verbal acknowledgement amount to a grim grunt as she abruptly yanked her arm out of Eyzn's grip. These imposed condition were unlike Eyzn's usual mode of operation, she realized. Not at all similar to what he had done to the human. Back then, Eyzn was comparatively unconcerned with the amount of blood that he had caused the human to spill on repeated occasions. Violence and torture had been performed wantonly with a rampant enjoyment on Sam. What made Nya so different that he did not want her to suffer the same amount?

The thought had to be abandoned as Vahl bent down with a shrug as she gave a flick and rolled the body bag out to its full length. Maybe Eyzn was not as strong-willed as she had initially perceived. To balk now was to expose his weak flank at the worst possible time. Oh well, as long as she got to kill Nya herself, then what did it really matter?

Eyzn watched Vahl begin to mop up some of the blood from Sam's stomach, where the fatal wound had been inflicted, before he looked up and, seemingly in a spur-of-the-moment decision, pointed two fingers at the quarians that had accompanied Vahl into the room with him.

"I want you two to go with Vahl and help her get the job done," he ordered.

Vahl, now holding a bloody cloth after smearing away the blood on Sam's chin, began to protest, sensing that sending backup for such a simple mission was a slight against her perceived competency. Could she really not be trusted to dispatch just one emotional woman?

Eyzn shot her a look, a silent statement that this decision was not up for discussion. Vahl just clenched a fist at an agonizingly slow pace before she rolled her eyes and went back to cleaning Sam up, pacified for the moment.

The two quarian guards nodded their heads, unsure if they were given permission to speak at least. Eyzn directed his attention to the one on the right, a dark-suited, partially armored quarian.

"Remind me," Eyzn's hand slightly shook in thought. "I sent you to fetch Iroa from the Citadel, am I right?"

"That's correct, sir," the guard replied in a surprisingly deep voice, giving Eyzn an unexpected start. "I also provided assistance in administering the human's supplemental medication once I had arrived, if you recall."

"Of course, of course," Eyzn said idly. "Now I remember. A loyal trooper. I can see that your fastidiousness to the upcoming task will make me even more confident at its success, then."

"Thank you, sir," the guard dipped his head, but Eyzn had already put the man out of his mind as he turned back to talk with Iroa once more.

From the way that Eyzn was visibly acting around his stepfather, it was plain to see that he truly was eager to reconnect with Iroa once more, the separation between them having created feelings of anxiousness. He spoke rapidly, in lighter tones than the kind he had adopted when talking with Sam for the past few months. Even the rasp from his damaged throat had subsided in his excitement, his now constant cough notwithstanding. Keen to show off the digs that he had inherited, Eyzn led Iroa out of the room while a visibly annoyed Vahl was struggling to roll the human's corpse into the body bag before it could be carted out of there. The two men then sauntered through the bare hallways of the Shed and Iroa took notice of the damaged walls and debris-coated floors that they trampled on, leaving their footprints imprinted in the dust.

"Lot of damage you've accumulated," Iroa said out loud.

Eyzn carelessly shrugged. "Easily fixable."

"All this from Sam's escape?"

"Most of it was caused by Geth," Eyzn defended.

"Geth?"

"Ah, that's what I call our newest acquisition, a geth prime," Eyzn explained. "Nabbed from Rannoch. It responds to ' _Geth_ ,' so that's what I call it."

Iroa now had on a perturbed look now that he realized that geth were apparently part of Eyzn's grand equation. "I see..." he said, but it was not clear if he could indeed see.

Eyzn took no notice as they made their way through the shattered doorways, some of the metal reinforcements embedded in the concrete were now exposed after the stony coating had been cracked away. Evidence that the walls had been subject to severe impacts.

"Sam put Geth up for a lengthy chase," Eyzn continued to describe. "Actually got the drop on him at the end by overheating his gun and detonating it so that Geth fell down a few stories. Tricky, tricky human. Damaged some of the prime's hydraulics, too. No big matter – Geth will be back to full operational status within the solar day."

"I don't care about that," Iroa sighed as he walked alongside his stepson. "The welfare of one geth means nothing to me."

Eyzn chuckled as if he had been anticipating the dry comment, no animosity reflected in his eyes. "I understand why you'd think that, Iroa. But to tell you the truth, having a prime on your side does" _-cough, cough-_ "give you access to a lot of benefits. But enough about that, I can see the subject makes you uncomfortable. I mean, a reactivated geth back under our control? I know it sounds like I'm just repeating the same mistakes that our ancestors made, but I've taken the correct precautions this time. No, there's still so much that you need to see, Iroa! Come, look for yourself!"

Through the next door they went and Iroa's visor automatically dimmed as an artificial burst of light slammed against his retinas. He even had to throw up a hand to temporarily shield himself while Eyzn stepped forward, unperturbed. His ears also came under assault from the whoosh emitted by enormous fans in the ceiling filtering out large quantities of air in mere seconds. As Iroa slowly dropped his arm down once his eyes adjusted, he reached out and grabbed at the railing in front of him for support.

 _Ancestors…_ he wanted to say, but he somehow lacked the breath.

Below him, about three stories down, surrounded by white tile and concrete, milled at least a hundred quarians of varying sizes and colors, quarians whom Iroa had never seen before in his life. The elder man felt his legs grow wobbly and he steadied his upper body against the dark metal railing, realizing that he was up on some kind of catwalk that crisscrossed the cavernous room in a grid-like pattern.

Were all of these people under Eyzn's control? Why would he _do_ such a thing? Was this what Sam had been part of before he had been killed?

Upon further reflection, Iroa realized that the room was in a bit of a shambles. Smoke trails still lingered in the air near the ceiling – evidence of an explosion, perhaps? A couple patches of tile on the ground were blackened and smoldering like a few fires had been set there. But the biggest thing that was out of place in this main hall was the fact that an entire section of the catwalk had fallen to the ground, the metal leaving gouges into the shining floor as it had been scraped along the previously spotless surface.

Iroa was shrewd enough to surmise that Sam had utilized that fallen catwalk to clamber his way up to the restricted walkways and out of this place… whatever this place was. A few bodies of armored guards lay strewn over the floor near where the walkway had collapsed – the unlucky ones that had been standing atop the scaffolding when it had failed. A dozen meters to Iroa's right, he could also see more bodies litter the suspended path, but these quarians looked to have been shot, judging from the fresh blood still leaking from holes in their suits. Some of the guards looked to be missing portions of their heads from close range shots – a sickening sight to Iroa. Had this been Sam's doing? What could have possibly made the man so desperate to rampage though this place like an animal in an effort to flee?

What had Eyzn been doing?

"What…" Iroa attempted to say as he took in the appalling sight, "…in the name of…"

"Magnificent, isn't it?" Eyzn whispered as he spread his arms wide. "A relic of the old days, brought back to life by me. You'd have to give credit to the 'esteemed' Daro'Xen for the initial jumpstart in bankrolling this place, you know. Who would ever look twice at some random alien, even a quarian, renting warehouse space in the middle of an industrial zone on a planet so far removed from Rannoch?"

"H-How-?"

"Careful financing. Xen's coffers weren't all that well protected after the war. The Shed was primarily used as a prison, sort of a work site for all of the unfortunate men and women captured during the Rannochian Civil War. All the initial prisoners had been released when it looked like Xen was about to lose, but they took precautions with their captives by shipping them out in darkened craft, to make sure that no one could identify this place. Xen lost, and was executed as we all know, but she left some curious items behind in the interim. Someone hacked her private files after her death and sold them to the Shadow Broker, of which I spent a pittance to get a copy of. Xen's balance sheets showed that she had been diverting a sizable amount of her war funds to the building you're standing in right now, so I decided to check it out for myself and found it rather unoccupied. Figured that I could do something worthwhile with an empty building, so… what you see now is the staging ground where all my troops are groomed."

"It is… unbelievable," Iroa admitted as he stepped away from the railing, his eyes momentarily losing focus. "You've assembled what amounts to a sizeable militia by any stretch of the means. This was… all for Sam?"

"No, not for Sam," Eyzn said as the two of them sauntered down the walkway that was bolted onto the side of the room. "All of this was for _you_ , Iroa."

A sparking noise from a failing light fixture chose that moment to go off at the very instant Iroa halted in place. The golden-wreathed quarian tilted his head, hesitant, certain that he had misheard his stepson.

"Why?" was his cautious reply.

"Because I wanted you to see what the depths of my initiative could accomplish. I've realized over the years that I haven't stood out to you as a son should - I haven't done anything noteworthy to be labeled a success. I figured that, because Sam helped take away part of your family, that if I had presented him to you in such an elaborate fashion, you would realize the potential I could offer to you."

Iroa gave a polite chuckle and a gentle pat on the wrist as the two quarians passed through another series of doors into the Shed's control room. Cool lights from whatever vidscreens were still functioning flickered into the tight room, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that hurled multiple shadows over the walls in varying shades of darkness.

"You went to a lot of effort just to gain my approval," Iroa noted as he took a seat across from Eyzn's, a thick wooden table now separating the two as they engaged in an appraisal of judgmental stares. "But I was not aware that I had been giving you the impression that you had something… lacking." Iroa then leaned to the side to catch a glimpse of the dozens of camera feeds that Eyzn had at his disposal. "But I cannot deny that what you've accomplished here _is_ impressive, to say the least."

Eyzn's eyes raised as he undoubtedly had a brazen grin on his face. "I _knew_ you would see my point of view. It's great to have you back, Iroa."

"Good to be free of the Citadel, at least," Iroa murmured as he arched his back and stretched for a bit. "House arrest was astoundingly mind-numbing."

"You'll have all the entertainment you'll ever need in the near future. I guarantee it."

"I don't doubt it," Iroa breathed a soft laugh. "It seemed like _you_ were adequately entertained in my absence."

Eyzn sat ramrod straight, his arms folded behind his head as he gave a solitary blink in an uncomprehending manner. The screens behind him fizzled, the hodgepodge of images projecting meaningless details in a setting completely focused on the absolute minutia.

"What… do you mean?" Eyzn carefully asked.

Iroa did not answer immediately, but leaned forward as he touched a finger to the desk, activating the haptic hologram projector and causing a vibrant orange interface to spring up from the wood surface, showcasing a series of menus and folders for which to direct any queries. Despite not being familiar with the series of subfolders in this database, Iroa was familiar with the generic nomenclature of the files he was searching for, and it took him a remarkably short time to target the exact sequence of items in the location where they currently resided.

There was no hesitation on Iroa's end as he selected to open up the files as one consecutive attachment. Immediately, the selected files began to play, all in video format. The resulting holo-screen that acted as a barrier between Eyzn and Iroa displayed the same images for them, but the overall mood grew a little frostier as both quarians intensely studied the series of images being portrayed for them, the private audience.

The volume was off, which was most likely a good thing, because the current portrayals of the torture and torment of Sam McLeod would definitely be a lot more distressing and unpleasant, even for the both of them, if they were to have to listen to the uncomfortable sounds that accompanied the brutal images. Eyzn said nothing, cautiously awaiting Iroa's next words as he struggled to peer through the semi-transparent barrier of the holoscreen that was blocking his view of his stepfather. Iroa skipped through a few of the mutilation sections almost absentmindedly, pausing intermittently on sections that caught his interest. The elder quarian studied the expressions on the human through the screen, memorizing each and every infuriated or pained face the man made and tried to justify this feeling that Iroa now felt inside of him - the knowledge of having killed the human.

"Adequately entertained indeed," Iroa whispered as he finally paused the security footage and leaned back, almost proudly.

Off guard, Eyzn levelled a finger at Iroa. "How did you know what to search for? I never told you I had footage of those sessions."

"Your 'recruits' turned out to be a little too mouthy for their own good," Iroa placidly shrugged as he deliberately tapped his fingers against the desk. "Perhaps I should have added an amendment to my original statement: what you accomplished here is impressive, Eyzn, _but…_ your methods leave something to be desired."

The feed was now stuck on Sam's frozen face, showcasing him mid-scream. The timestamp of the particular sessions was two months old, but Eyzn was having a hard time remembering exactly what had been discussed that day. There had been so many. Too much collective information for him to remember.

Eyzn gave a callous glance to the frozen vidscreen and then back to Iroa. "Don't tell me that you suddenly grew a conscience, especially for _this_ man?"

"No," Iroa gritted. "It's just that the effort you made to capture and retain Sam in this location did not seem to derive any substantial benefit, from what I can see."

"That wasn't the point!" Eyzn suddenly slapped a hand down onto the desk, eyes livid. "It was always about making that bastard pay for what he did to m-... what he did to _us_. Do I really have to remind you of the fact that he was partially responsible for Kraana's death? Or that he made it so that you would never have to see your daughter again? And where do _I_ come in, hmm? Do you think I'd be able to just let go of the fact that Sam took off half my foot and" _-cough, cough-_ "nearly caved in my throat?"

Iroa suddenly seemed dangerous as the light flitted upon the side of his helmet. " _Never_ assume that I felt anything less than animosity for that man, Eyzn. But bear in mind that it's not the fact that you wanted to kill the man that I take umbrage at, but the fact that you stretched out his torment for so long. _That_ , I have trouble condoning."

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer person," Eyzn waved away. "Sam was irking me with his belligerence. I wanted to see if he would take that stubbornness all the way. I nearly had him, Iroa. I was so _close_ to cracking him open completely."

"Perhaps not as close as you might think. Do recall that he was ten seconds away from escaping until I had to intervene."

"A minor setback."

"Only because _I_ stopped him," Iroa now shot a deliberate finger at his stepson's direction. "It would have been a full-blown disaster had I not come at the right time. If only you had taken care of Sam earlier instead of resorting to these sloppy torture techniques, you would have been rid of this problem far earlier and would have gained a lot more peace of mind in the process."

Eyzn leaned back in his chair, an arm raised upward with his elbow resting on an armrest. His fingers twiddled on nothing in mid-air for a bit as he steadily looked on at Iroa. It was unknown if he was going to fly in a rage at any second or simply submit Iroa to the silent treatment. All Iroa could tell right now was that Eyzn's body language was impossible to read.

But finally, the younger quarian gave a simple shrug and sat up straight. "I don't want to argue over the details with you. In fact, you're probably right. I just hope that you can understand my… frustration. I still had several more things that I wished to taunt Sam with and now I'll never get that chance."

Iroa let out a hidden breath of relief.

"Consider it a good omen," he replied. "The human found his end in a quick and relatively humane way, at the very least. He can bother us no longer and you can finally be rid of him in your mind."

The young quarian leapt to his feet, no longer morose. He buzzed with a palpable excitement and the very air seemed to hum around him as he walked over to where Iroa sat.

"Cause for celebration, then," he beamed. "Perhaps in due time, I'll forget all about Sam entirely."

"For your sake," Iroa said as he too stood to meet Eyzn, "I hope that's true."

Then the two embraced, much like a father and son would. Iroa felt Eyzn's arms tighten around his body and he marveled at the sheer enthusiasm for which his stepson basked in the affection. Eyzn seemed to be trembling within the hug, which only made Eyzn more and more amazed.

Unbeknownst to him, thanks to a muted vocabulator, Eyzn was softly crying wet tears of anger.

* * *

The Citadel

" _...we regret that we are unable to bring closure to this unfortunate circumstance, but we have to reiterate that we could not procure any evidence that would be of use to a court of law, not even on a personal level. We will be in touch later to close out the final payment and, once again, we apologize for not being able to shed any light on the matter._ "

Rie sourly stared at her holo-console's receiver as the call disconnected with an almost inaudible blip. The glow from the console itself vanished once the message had finished playing, leaving just the single-filament lamps in her home office as the only sources of illumination in her midst - comparatively dim, a bit _too_ dim for her turian eyes, she grumbled to herself as she squinted in the near-dark.

The office had formerly been a bedroom in Rie's apartment that she had repurposed for her work. It was actually a cozy place for her to reside - although a lot of the aesthetics here had been from Chandler's suggestions, not hers. Rie found it amusing that her husband's sense of style vastly outclassed her own, even though the human said multiple times that the female gender was stereotypically supposed to be the one that focused more on looks and general appearances.

She had to put him in a headlock for that comment.

Soft, dark colored carpet had been laid upon the floor, rather springy against her feet - Rie liked to walk her carapaced bare feet across the fuzzy surface. A heavy wood desk stood proudly against the wall, with a plush swivel chair accompanying it. All in all, quite a lovely place to be. Rie would have liked to have transferred this motivic branding over to her other office back in the hospital but regulations would not stand for it. That was probably why she relished the days when she could work from home. Not to mention the sense of pride and accomplishment she could garner when she looked up at her two diplomas adorning the space right above her console.

Usually, Rie always felt powerful and on top of the world in this room. She had hoped that the room itself would strengthen her the more she resided in its impenetrable interior.

Sadly, that had not turned out to be the case today. The firm's message to her this morning was going to derail her mood for hours - she hated this dark twinge of foreboding that was beginning to pool near the base of her spine.

The door to the office opened and Chandler walked in, a worried look on his face.

"Any luck?" he asked Rie as he made his way over to her desk.

Rie's eyes lowered in disgust as she tracked her husband and she made a gesture of frustration towards the deactivated console once he began to lean against her chair. "Same as the last two firms. Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Now Chandler wilted as he too began to approach the end of his rope. This wasn't news that he wanted to hear, even though he should have known better not to hold out hope at this point. "That's _three_ PI's we've gone through now, each one highly rated and recommended. We've been at this for months now and the end result is that they've found nothing on Sam? How is that possible? Are they trying to tell us that Sam simply vanished into thin air?"

"I don't know!" Rie sighed, similarly nonplussed. "But… it really means that either we've been hiring incompetents this entire time… or that Sam is hidden so well that it would take a Spectre to find him."

"Have we _considered_ hiring a Spectre?" Chandler spoke to the air, knowing that the question itself was ludicrous.

"Spectres don't hire themselves out," Rie said anyway.

"Not if we don't find one corrupt enough."

Rie quickly scratched at a mandible, her back row of teeth peeking through her carapace, signaling her immense agitation. "It's pointless. All pointless. Sam wouldn't just up and leave without letting us know… right? I mean, he's never been that insensitive! Sure, he can be a stubborn son of a bitch sometimes, but we could always decipher his reasoning for any dramatics."

"Then that just leaves the only alternative for his disappearance," Chandler grimaced as he leaned against the desk to take better stock of his wife, his hands folded across his chest. "Eyzn."

The chill that passed between them defied explanation. Even the mere mention of the crazed quarian was enough to drive a wedge of silence into the conversation. Nervously, the couple briefly looked away before they beheld each other again.

Rie rubbed at a forehead plate as she scrunched her eyes shut. "I know. I _know_. But you'd think that Eyzn would have left some sort of trace even if he was responsible. If three PIs could not find anything, how can we know for sure?"

"We can't. That's the problem. But it's the only explanation. Who else would hold such a large grudge against Sam, especially since Sam came to specifically _warn_ us about him months ago? If Eyzn isn't the one responsible, I'll eat my own shirt."

"It's not the only problem," Rie said morosely as she wrung her hands. "We have no _proof_. We can't just go to C-Sec and declare our suspicions of Eyzn capturing our friend."

Chandler blinked and partially leaned away from the desk. "Why is that? People submit tips to C-Sec all the time."

"Yeah, but usually those complains all reside in C-Sec's jurisdiction which is the Citadel. As far as we know, Sam disappeared on Earth, not at all in C-Sec's purview. And if the private sector came up empty-handed in their search on more than one occasion, then do you really expect a partially corrupted police force to accomplish more?"

The human now began to pace the room, with his hands clasped behind his back. "Fuck," he growled, discouraged. "What a shitshow. And Nya, too. God, I can't imagine how she's been feeling with all this going on."

Rie turned in her chair to face her husband. "Have you talked to her lately?"

"No. Have you?"

The turian shook her head, yellow eyes noticeably concerned as her gaze slowly slipped downward. "No. I keep trying to visit her apartment, but I never get past the door. I've either been catching the place while she's out or she just doesn't want to see anyone. Spirits, Chandler, I… I'm very worried for her."

Chandler halted in the middle of the room and stared pensively off into space. "Join the club. She's been getting worse ever since she went down to Earth to talk with Sam. It's been total radio silence on her end."

"You don't think…" Rie mused with a worrisome look, "...that she's getting to be… unstable? I mean, who knows what could happen in the next few days - she's absolutely _miserable_. I know she is."

"Miserable or not, if she wanted our help she would have asked for it by now," Chandler gritted. "What good can we do if we keep getting pushed away?"

"I know, but… I just want to keep a closer eye on her. Just in case she does anything… troubling."

Chandler subtly shook his head and sighed in the stuffy room, the air now feeling noticeably thicker to the two of them.

"Yeah, it would do her some good if we kept trying, at least. But I have to say, Rie, I know that Nya 'proclaims' that she no longer loves Sam anymore yet I just have this bad feeling that if anything has happened to the man… then she will be lost to us."

As soon as Chandler finished his sentence, the couple's collective mood sank quite a bit, one uncomfortable truth unintentionally revealed to them. The two stared at each other in the room, all alone and now unconsciously chilled.

"Somehow," Rie whispered, "I think that it's already too late."

* * *

En route - Earth/Citadel Low-Orbit Lane

The UT-47 Kodiak shuttle was a boxy craft that was certainly not a sight to behold, as its drab lines and uninspired design betrayed its purpose for functionality rather than make a distinguishing statement on the owner's overall taste. As a matter of fact, the people who would have deliberately bought a Kodiak for their personal use would probably not be interested in such individualistic displays as the shuttlecraft had to be one of the most ubiquitous sights in the galaxy, with thousands and thousands of the damned things being in use today. Add to the fact that the Kodiak's manufacturer had a lucrative contract with most of the established militaries and police forces for years on end, meaning that the Kodiak was probably the most commonplace space-worth ship ever produced.

The Kodiak had a true carrying capacity of up to 14 people, pilot and copilot included. Of course, the pilot's cabin could be swapped out for a VI autopilot, but investing in machine learning, despite how commonplace the tech was these days, was considerably more expensive than simply bolting in a few seats and entrusting the safe flights of the shuttle to a living being. However, despite what the theoretical capacity the Kodiak was capable of, Vahl felt uncomfortably cramped in the shuttle's interior.

She was not so much concerned with the pilot, who was up front and bored as the automatic Citadel gating protocols had taken control of the shuttle long ago to guide it in to dock. No, Vahl was more annoyed at the body bag placed on the floor in front of her that was taking up almost all of the room in the main hold.

The two quarian guards that had accompanied her had claimed the only chairs in the shuttle, forcing Vahl to stand. She had considered barking in their faces for them to move and give her one of their seats, but she had been in a constant emotional flux for about an hour now that she had disregarded any abrasive notions completely. So, Vahl continued standing, a hand clamped on handrail to steady her in case any atmospheric changes caused the craft to uncontrollably rock back and forth. She had already been subject to a bumpy ride during the first fifteen minutes of the flight, only causing Vahl's mood to grow darker. The Kodiak may have acceleration/inertia dampeners and artificial gravity, but that did not protect this sorry piece of crap from turbulence.

And this man in the body bag before her was the main reason why she was stuffed in this stupid shuttle in the first place. This… pathetic… worthless… _human!_

It would be another half hour before the Kodiak could be docked at the Citadel, but after five more minutes of Vahl having to suffer through this tumultuous ride, she had just about had enough.

Disengaging from the handrail, Vahl stepped over and knelt next to the body bag, her eyes staring daggers through her visor and the tarp. Quickly, she reached over and yanked the zipper of the bag down, exposing the relatively peaceful face of Sam McLeod, his skin already having taken on a lighter shade. The human's eyes were still shut, and his mouth was slightly agape. As far as a death mask goes, Sam definitely could have had it worse.

But it was not enough for Vahl to gaze upon a corpse. That much was apparent when she unexpectedly yanked a knife from her boot and started to brandish the blade closer and closer to Sam's cold face. What bare light existed in the stuffy temple of the Kodiak flashed off the knife, reflecting and warping in turn off of Vahl's visor.

"This is what you _deserve_ , bastard," Vahl hissed to the dead man as she raised her arm up, prepared to sink the knife all the way to the hilt into Sam's chest.

Before she could carry that out, a hand gripped Vahl's wrist, arresting her motion. Vahl gave a growl as she whirled her head to face one of the quarian guards, who had risen from his chair to stop her. The grip itself was not strong enough to be painful, but just firm to the point where she could not slash at Sam's body.

Vahl glared at the guard, teeth bared and unseen.

"What are you _doing?!_ " she wheezed.

"Eyzn said no mutilation," the guard evenly replied in his deep voice.

"For Nya! Not him! He's already dead!"

The guard made a brisk, almost needless glance, at Sam's body as if Vahl's statement on that last point was somehow incorrect. Vahl squinted her eyes, trying to pinpoint the guard's own hazy expression, but the poor light in the shuttle was making visibility quite difficult and soon she gave up.

The guard processed a moment before he spoke up again. "If you desecrate the body more than it already has been subject to, you risk lessening the impact when you show it to Nya. The body needs to be unmolested, intact, and above all, _recognizable_."

Vahl yanked her arm away as soon as the quarian guard softened his grip. Vahl continued kneeling next to the body, her expression shifty. This was quite the bold guard to contradict a choice by one of his superiors, Vahl thought. Ordinarily, this would have given Vahl the license to dispense a punishment of her choosing, but since recent events had picked up in significance and at a great rate, the proper chain of command had become quite blurry in that time. Who knows? This guard might have been under direct orders from Eyzn to see to the body's safety. If she were to dole out discipline on her end, that might subject Vahl herself to Eyzn's wrath.

In the end, Vahl's violent craving soon died down to a simmer, but not before one final lick of flame decided to flare up before the urge was extinguished.

Before the guard could interject once more, Vahl leaned over with the knife, pressed the serrated edge against Sam's stiff cheek, and made a long cut across his face.

The effect was not as satisfying as Vahl had hoped. Blood slowly leaked from the deep cut, but at a far slower rate due to there not being a heartbeat to pump any more blood out from the wound itself. A few thick trickles ran down the human's cheek, a diagonal cut that ran from an inch underneath Sam's left eye to just under his cheekbone.

Disappointed, Vahl wiped the knife off onto Sam's shirt before she holstered it and straightened back up again. The guard who had prevented her from slicing into the human a million ways tracked her with his head, no doubt feeling tested by Vahl's actions. _Fuck him,_ Vahl thought. _I need this._

The guard, however, did not say anything more but simply dropped down to zip Sam's body back up into the bag, his fingers delicate with handling the corpse.

The other guard, having seen the entire series of events play out in front of him, was too timid to speak up out of fear. Truthfully, after having seen the sort of twisted amusement that Vahl got off on defiling the human's body, he was now struggling to push down a hefty dose of nausea, in very real danger of being sick in his suit.

Vahl, unconcerned, simply gazed out the window.

* * *

 **A/N: Once again, everyone has my thanks for sticking around for this long.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Iroa and Eyzn: "The Last Road" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Vahl's Anger: "The Girl's Gone" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**


	15. Chapter 12: The Path To Awe

The Shed

The day had begun to wind down - the adrenaline flow slowing to a trickle instead of a full-on gush from the tap. The chaos that had begun in the Shed had finally been quelled, allowing the guards and the wardens assigned to it the chance to wind down in the hours following the uprising, especially since the conspirators had either all been killed or recaptured.

Rightly so, every single one of the guards who had been present during the time of the commotion in the main holding hall assumed that they had seen enough turmoil for the day. After all, now that the pesky business of that human mounting an escape had been foiled, surely there would not be any more distractions that could possibly crop up, could there? Two furors in one day was surely not possible.

The alarms blaring throughout every single hallway seemed to derive a cold sort of pleasure in upending the expectations of every person in the place.

Long, high-pitched notes of tension and dismay resounded beyond every corner. Flashing halogen lights flared constantly moving shadows in every room, creating an atmosphere of danger. It looked like the walls were ablaze, fire alight within the very heart of the Shed.

Operating on low reserves of epinephrine and simmering pools of dread in their gut, a cadre of quarian guards hustled through the barebones facility in a ramshackle formation. Their boots beat an erratic, not-in-time, pattern as they hopelessly bumped and prodded into one another as they turned right and left down a multitude of corners, following the directions imprinted onto their omni-tools - instructions relayed by their boss. Whatever was going on, something had occurred in one of the remote wings of the Shed. Their omni-tools said little else except for all of them to come armed, prepared for anything.

Eventually, the panting and out-of-breath cluster of quarians made it to the indicated location after the rush through the concrete halls, fighting hard not to bend over and hack their lungs out from the frantic scramble. A small squad was already in position by a door - which specifically led to a closet - comprised of Eyzn, Iroa, and a few other guards who stood in front of the entrance. To the new arrivals, based on the rather irritated attitude that Eyzn was radiating in waves, they could tell that something was amiss. Why else would he summon nearly an entire squadron's worth of men to congregate at a closet door?

Eyzn tapped at his own omni-tool, and the piercing alarm died down with a pathetic whimper, a relief to everyone in close proximity to the distractingly loud noise. With a glaring look, he appraised one of the guards that had been holding position in front of the closet's entrance, Iroa hovering over his shoulder. The rest of the guards began to fidget as they tried to guess what was going on, but they did not dare speak up lest they risk public humiliation and a beating for talking out of turn.

"All in place, now," Eyzn muttered to himself as he swept his eyes over the assembled group.

Iroa shuffled up next to his stepson. "We can begin investigations, then?"

"Might as well," Eyzn shrugged as he rubbed two fingers together, a sign that he was fighting to conceal his agitation.

The troops had not been around Eyzn long enough to decipher his nervous tics, but even so, it was apparent that something had unnerved him quite badly. Hushed whispers shot through the group - what the hell was going on? Had there been another escape attempt? Why have all of them group up at this seemingly insignificant closet?

The list of questions went on and on until they were too numerous for anyone to make sense of them.

"One more time," Eyzn said irritably at the guard with an impatient gesture, an indication for the new arrivals to pay attention and listen up. "And I don't care about the insignificant details otherwise I'll cut your throat for wasting my time. You were on patrol, performing your usual rounds… only this time something was out of place. Tell me again, you said you found… _what?_ "

The soldier, if his face could be more clearly perceived, bore the look of a mouse bidden to bell a cat. As it was, the frantic twitch of his eyes was the only sign denoting his frightened mood to everyone, unused to being scrutinized so closely by Eyzn and clearly intimidated by the consequences if he continued to annoy him so.

"I…" the soldier began, "...I think it's best if you see for yourself… sir."

Rather un-spectacularly, the door then parted to allow everyone to bear witness to exactly what all this hubbub was revolving around. From the reactions that Eyzn and Iroa were giving off as they quickly peered inside, it was clear that the entire vibe of the situation was troubling, to say the least.

Eyzn did not speak for nearly half a minute as he took in what lay upon the floor of the (empty) closet. His mind kept wrapping around itself in an attempt to figure out exactly what the hell was going on, the unconscious shaking of his head becoming more and more pronounced with each passing moment.

Someone had deposited a body on the floor of the closet. That in of itself gave rise to a host of questions, not to mention problems.

The quarian that was lying on the ground in the closet was obviously dead, but that was not the most disconcerting part. The reason it was easy for everyone to tell, even at a first glance, that this particular quarian was dead, and _why_ this was disconcerting in the first place, was because he had no enviro-suit on.

The corpse was completely bare, stripped of his protective covering. The enviro-suit itself was nowhere to be seen - the killer must have made off with it and had stashed it somewhere else. Cold and naked, a tiny pool of blood had made a circle about a foot in diameter around the quarian's head, which was topped with a mess of thin, black hair. The quarian's silver eyes were wide open and his unremarkable face was frozen in an expression of shock - whatever had killed him, it must have been immediate.

This was upsetting to the guards able to view the body for a number of reasons. Besides having the knowledge that one of their own had been killed and stuffed in a deserted closet, most quarians very rarely saw one another outside of their enviro-suits. It felt almost… inappropriate, to stare at the naked body of one of their comrades, even if they were deceased. Many of the quarians turned away after only a few seconds while Eyzn and Iroa conversely kept their gazes locked onto the corpse.

"Was he like this when you found him?" Eyzn grimaced towards the guard who had made the discovery.

The soldier frantically nodded his head. "I was on my patrol when I happened t-to… pass by the closet here. I… I didn't think anything of it, but I felt that I should just check it… check it out. J-Just in case and… and I found… I found…"

Eyzn waved a hand to shut the guard up, already frustrated with the man's stammering. He knelt down by the body, his eyes dispassionate.

"Was he one of ours?" he asked, meaning if he was a guard or one of the prisoners under his purview.

Now the soldier seemed extremely off-edge. "I… I have no _idea_ , sir."

"Why is that?" Eyzn asked, failing to contain his disdain.

"It's just… we don't _know_ who he is. We have no way to know."

 _Ah, of course,_ Eyzn realized with a slow, forlorn blink. The sad truth of the matter is that, when quarians were in their enviro-suits, they had their own, subtle, unique tics, along with slight variations in their suits, which allowed other quarians to recognize who they were speaking to. It is a facet of implicit communication among quarians that allow them to perceive individuals when the differences might be too slight for other races to pick up. The flip side of that coin meant that, if a quarian happened to look upon another quarian outside of their suit, the ironic outcome is that they would not be able to recognize them on sight alone because they would have no prior knowledge as to what they looked like underneath their suits. Weirdly enough, today might have been the first time that any of the quarians milling about here had ever seen one of their own without an enviro-suit on.

So, Mr. Dead Guy here was a total unknown, a blank spot within the facility. Eyzn was dreading going through the identification process now that he had no enviro-suit to work off of. Facial recognition upon this body was not going to cut it because, obviously, no one kept facial profiles of quarians. Eyzn found himself envying the other races once again for the luxuries they took for granted by not having to be refined within such damned coverings.

"Just pull his omni-tool and get his ID that way," Iroa then came to the rescue, indicating the deceased man.

Yet the guard still shook his head fearfully. "We can't do that either… sir. His omni-tool was… er… _missing_ when I found him."

Due to the inherent problem in quarians exposing themselves to the elements, the main components for their omni-tools were all built into their suits, but the very design of how these tools were implemented allowed key peripherals to be upgraded without any risk, as simple as swapping out parts on a holo-console. But since the suit of the quarian had vanished, gone as well was the entire omni-tool.

But there were other ways around this, as Iroa was already pointing out. "Connect to this man's main implants," he indicated at a spot at the base of the body's neck. "See if you can access his main records."

Eyzn was already turning the body onto its stomach. "That's not going to happen," he muttered with a fair amount of vitriol. He didn't elaborate, but he didn't need to because Iroa could see for himself exactly why this was not an option with this body.

Right at the base of the quarian's neck, just a centimeter above his shoulder blades, was a deep wound that dribbled surprisingly little blood, despite the fact that it was quite a brutal looking gash. However, Iroa knew instantly why this was going to be a problem and he rubbed at his own shoulder in anticipation, fantasizing that he could feel the own burn the weapon had projected when it had taken this man's life with a subtle ache.

Whoever had done this to the quarian had to have been insanely strong, not to mention highly trained, based upon the fact that the killer had accomplished all this with a relatively small degree of effort. Restraining a man takes a ton of strength not immediately apparent to the untested individual. A lot of superficial wounds, such as cuts, scrapes, and bruises, would be garnered in a struggle, wounds that this quarian did not appear to have on him which meant that he had been subdued quickly and cleanly. Equally troubling was the fact that the assailant knew right where to strike in order to kill the man while accomplishing a whole lot of objectives all at once. The killer had knifed the quarian in the back with a large blade that had severed his spinal column in less than a second. Death had been instantaneous - removing the enviro-suit was meant to act as a hindrance to anyone who found the body, not intended to be used as a method of termination. Also, neck wounds of that caliber did not bleed a whole lot, so the killer had less of a mess to clean up, which explained the relatively small pool of blood that had formed around the head of the corpse. Finally, the bulk of the implants wired underneath the skin of the quarian all congregated around the spinal column. Severing the column meant that the killer had sliced through all the implant connections, causing the cortical center to be permanently destroyed. There was now no way possible for anyone to pull any information from the tech inside the head of the corpse.

And the killer had taken the enviro-suit too, to boot, which would have contained backups of the body's ID and serial numbers.

 _We need to find where that suit has gone,_ Eyzn thought to himself sourly.

Suddenly suspicious, Eyzn raised himself up from the corpse as he motioned with his head for Iroa to step around the corner with him so that they could confer in private.

"I realize that you just arrived only a few hours ago," Eyzn spoke lowly, "but you haven't seen anything out of the ordinary since being here, have you?"

"You mean apart from the fact that the main detention area has a collapsed walkway, several of the walls have holes in them from a geth smashing through them, and that I had to shoot a crazed human rampaging all over the place?" Iroa said with a humorously even tone. " _No_ , I haven't."

Eyzn did not appreciate the snide remark. "A simple yes or no would have sufficed."

"You asked."

"Never mind," Eyzn sighed as he craned his head around the corner to where he had left the remaining contingent of his troops. "Keelah, this is annoying. Things were just starting to look up and now I have to contend with the issue of an imposter in our midst."

"It can only be another quarian who's responsible. It's not like a turian or a human can fit inside our suits. The legs would give them away. Why would someone steal one in the first place?"

"Apart to make things difficult for us?" Eyzn crossed his arms as his veiled expression darkened. "Best guess is that the murderer dumped the suit somewhere where they might think we're never going to look. Regardless, we're going to need to run a full staff scan right away. Weed the outsider from everyone else."

Iroa gave a double-take, clearly incredulous. "A full check of _everyone?_ That'll take time."

"I know," Eyzn grumbled wearily, "but what options do I have at my disposal?"

Iroa offered no other immediate solution, which Eyzn took as his cue to disengage. Beating a path back to the group, he bemoaned loudly enough for Iroa to hear, but for everyone else not to notice.

"I really should have set up that DNA profiler right at the outset!"

* * *

Citadel  
 _Arm 1_

She couldn't sleep.

Nya shuffled and groaned as she sat up upon the bed, the mattress depressing as she pushed her torso up by her hands. She blearily blinked and gave her helmeted head a quick shake, her eyes quickly adjusting to the dark room. Rather mournfully, she spread a hand across the wide expanse of the bed - a large enough area that could more than comfortably fit two people. Yet, she was the only one who slept upon it (over the covers) these days.

It had always seemed so empty to her in the past few months.

She tilted her wrist to activate her chronometer, finding to her annoyance that it was smack dab in the middle of her allotted topor. Quarians naturally ran on less sleep than humans, but Nya was exasperated to discover that she had only been asleep for only two hours, which, however you chose to cut it, was not enough time.

Maybe it was the rustling noises coming from the next room that had something to do with this interruption.

Slowly Nya turned to face the source of the disturbance. Her sleep-addled brain fumbled as she tried to determine exactly what was causing the slight noises that her sensitive ears had picked up. It was hard to tell the very nature of the sounds, but she surmised that she probably left some appliance on somewhere or that the advanced filtration device was blowing air all over the living room and causing some untethered papers to fly frantically all over the walls.

Knowing that she was never going to get back to a successful sleep unless she dealt with this now, Nya gave a wordless grumble as she lowered her feet down to the carpeted floor as she prepared to leave her bedroom. Nya slept in her enviro-suit all the time lately - it had been months since she had last left it. It was simply more convenient and less of a hassle for Nya to remain inside her suit at all times, especially since she had no reasons whatsoever to relieve herself of the burden.

But damn, she remembered those special moments of liberation with a gentle fondness, knowing what they entailed during her life. Nya clenched a fist and clutched it close to her heart as she fiercely shut her eyes, drawing out breath with a tight sob, not wanting to dredge up those painful memories of her life already. It was too soon for regret.

She just wanted to stop thinking about Sam, was that really so hard for her to accomplish?

Sam… her lover… husband… betrayer… murderer…

 _No!_ Nya thought with another heavy shake. None of that now. _Keelah, I might need medication to have a hope of a decent rest._

Yawning, a drained and tormented Nya finally stood in front of the door to the rest of the apartment and waited the half-second for the motion detectors to indicate her presence so that they could open automatically.

Nya was still too lethargic to fully take stock of her surroundings for a few seconds, from every dark corner of the apartment extending from kitchen to the foyer. It was in this series of moments that Nya fruitlessly spent searching for whatever had been the original source for the noise that had disrupted her sleep, her eyes struggling to peer through the dim interior without any luck.

This included the moment when, from out of the blue, Nya was suddenly whacked on the back of her head with a hard object.

The room turned topsy-turvy as Nya pitched forward, her vision exploding with stars. The front of her visor smacked firmly upon the carpeted floor, jolting Nya's face and causing her to bite her tongue, drawing blood. The visor was intact - it would take a hefty amount of force to shatter a quarian's visor - but Nya was stunned as she had failed to cushion her landing before she had landed chest-first onto the ground. The knock to the head certainly was not helping matters. Bolts ran across her field of view. The entire room seemed to vibrate.

Disoriented, her head ablaze with an agonizing ache, and paralyzed by a fit of uncontrollable coughs brought on from the impact to her lungs, Nya feebly stirred on the ground as her vision yawed and rolled, splitting into several blurry layers, nearly rendering her blind. _Someone was in her apartment with her._ Her hands groped across the floor, desperately trying to drag her along, a lone thought in her brain begging her to run… run… run, to get away from whoever had broken into her home.

 _No…_ she panicked. _No… don't… please. Please, I… I have nothing… please…_

A hard boot to Nya's shoulder turned her panting form over onto her back.

"Not what you were expecting, eh?" a smooth, female voice singed through her myopia.

Nya, still coughing, clutched at her stomach helplessly as her vision slowly came back to normal to concentrate upon a sandy-suited quarian lightly tossing a metal pole in a hand. Recognition did not come at all to Nya, who remained ever confused as she lay upon the floor. The burglar/assailant knew of this fact, and since that Nya still had no breath with which to speak, gave a light laugh, one heavily laced with sadism and anticipation.

"We haven't formally met yet," the female said, as nonchalantly as one would when discussing the weather as she briefly held the pole to Nya's neck, pressing it against the rubbery covering. "Nya'McLeod, right?" The quarian then stomped her foot upon one of Nya's wrists, pinning her to the ground while Nya cried out in pain. "Call me Vahl," she sneered right before she sank a fist into Nya's gut.

Immediately, Nya's upper torso tried to rise up above the ground, a reflex reaction in the wake of the punch. A hideous gulping sound that dissolved into a pitiable moan escaped her mouth, the helmet hiding the fact that her mouth was open as wide as it could go in a frantic attempt to suck air into her lungs. A thousand different methods for coping with this threat all blazed into existence within Nya's mind, but she quickly became overwhelmed by the stimuli, and from the fear and the pain that was shooting throughout her body, rendering her nearly to the point of being catatonic.

Nya lost all muscle strength as she succumbed to her fear. Vahl took advantage of this as she bent down to hoist Nya up from her hood. The thick fabric made tiny snapping noises as it was strained from taking the weight of its owner.

Vahl had this malicious look in her eyes as she brought Nya up to her eye level, one hand clamped around the woman's throat. Nya was now spluttering, making choking noises as she still failed to comprehend why this was happening.

" _P-Please…_ " Nya gasped, her eyes as wide as they could go while her hands scrambled at Vahl's arms. "Wh-Why…?"

Vahl just shook her head, her own visor barely scraping Nya's, so close as if Vahl wanted to try and get a glimpse of what Nya's visor was protecting within. " _I'm_ not the one to ask, darling. Eyzn says _'hello_ ,' by the way. We both simply wanted to give you a token of our appreciation for all the help you've given us."

If Nya's complete sense of the universe had not been overturned at this point, then it certainly was at the very mere mention of the word, "Eyzn." A tiny sob came from Nya as she felt herself grow small in Vahl's grip.

She realized that she had been used this whole time. The enemy had found his advantage and had utilized it… through her. Nya had been a conductor for Eyzn's rage and she had been so blind to his intentions.

Now was when she would be discarded.

Nya then knew she was about to die.

Vahl suddenly shunted her arms out and threw Nya a few feet across the room, a hefty maneuver. Nya landed on her feet but her momentum was so great that she could not help but backpedal helplessly until she tripped over a glass coffee table, upending it, and sending it down to the ground along with a vase that had been perched atop its surface. Both table and vase shattered with an almighty crash and Nya's body thumped down amongst the pieces, having finally fallen from her stumble. Groaning, Nya rolled her battered body atop the broken shards, crunching them to dust underneath her form. Her vision was going double again, and she blinked peacefully, feeling lethargic once more.

It was only then did Nya realize that she and Vahl were not the only individuals in her apartment. Standing closer to the door, next to the couch, were two more quarians, both decked out in dark colors and bits of hodgepodge armor that barely seemed to match the overall aesthetic of their suits. Between the two newcomers on the floor lay a black, bulky item that looked like an overstuffed tarp bag.

But upon closer scrutiny did Nya realize that the two had brought a _body bag_ into the apartment. And it was… already full?

Hearing a cackle, Nya barely lifted her head enough to watch Vahl carelessly smack aside a glass that had been set down upon the kitchen counter, propelling it into the wall with a furious smashing noise. Careless, wanton violence to give purpose to their visit. The sandy-suited quarian spread her arms out wide as she sauntered over to where Nya lay, eyes lidded in amusement.

" _Now_ is when we start to have some fun," Vahl hissed triumphantly as the gap between them closed tighter and tighter. "But your reckoning is not to come just yet."

Hidden, unbeknownst to Vahl, Nya's hand slid a particularly sharp piece of vase behind her back from where it had been deposited upon the carpet of the living room. Willing her trembling fingers to still themselves, Nya prayed for the madness to end quickly.

She would only have one chance.

Her hand tightened over the fragmented glass.

* * *

Citadel  
 _Arm 4_

"What the hell?" Rie exclaimed as she suddenly shot her arm up, her omni-tool all of a sudden raising Cain.

"The heck's going on?" Chandler similarly asked, a bit stupefied by the series of high-pitched notes and blinding lights his wife's tool was emitting. The thing was flashing and strobing to an erratic beat so brightly and obviously that it was throwing the darkened interior of their home office into their own little rave.

Between all the chaos Rie's omni-tool was emitting, to Chandler his first inane thought was that his wife's arm had spontaneously burst into flame.

Rie's yellow eyes were fraught with worry as she rapidly moved her fingers across her tool to disable the wealth of alarms that had been triggered. "Security system alert," she explained in a rushed voice, stumbling over her syllables that the words she spoke nearly came out in a jumbled mess. "I'm registering a break-in."

Chandler was already lost and his wife's rushing was not helping matters. "Whoa, slow down, slow down. What the hell do you mean that you're registering a break-in? A break-in _where?_ Our apartment? The hospital? Where?"

If Rie's face had the ability to turn ashen, she would be as pale as a ghost by now. "I'm registering an alarm trip at… Nya's place."

Rie was up and out of her chair at this revelation, now moving at a brisk pace as she hastily threw her coat over her shoulders while Chandler faltered behind her.

"Can you explain to me," Chandler said in a harried fashion as he mimicked his wife's preparations by dressing himself to leave, even if he had no complete understanding as to why yet, "why _you're_ getting alerts to Nya's apartment? Last I checked, you didn't live there."

The turian just shrugged as she slipped her feet into shin-high boots. "Call it a hunch on my part. Nya had her security system information printed right onto the access panel of her place, which was something I noticed when I had last visited her. You know, during that period when she was _especially_ miserable? I figured there might be a time that it would come in handy, so I programmed her system to keep me updated. All I did was link her credentials to my app and… well, what you see is what you get."

"Smart. But you don't think that this could simply be a false alarm? After all, it's not all that unusual for these systems to occasionally trip for no reason."

Rie was nearly out the door at this point and Chandler was still having trouble keeping up. They were taking the stairs down to the ground floor two at a time, Rie's tall legs giving her a clear advantage in this area.

"I would love, _love_ for this to be a false alarm," Rie said. "But after all that has happened so far… Sam's disappearance, Eyzn now showing up, Nya in severe depression, I'm not taking any more chances. Too many bad things have happened for us to stand idly by anymore. We need to get over to that apartment. ASAP."

Luckily, Chandler was the understanding sort when it came to logical trains of thought, so he didn't press Rie for any more questions. The two then bounded outside their complex less than a minute later, completely booking it over to the nearest skycar lot. They had to charter transport as neither of them owned a craft of their own. Unfortunately, this subjected them to the bane that all interstellar commuters of the 22nd Century have to experience: queuing. With every minute lost to waiting for a free skycar to be called in their direction, Rie and Chandler's moods grew more and more impatient, rapidly approaching the point where they would soon be completely fraught with worry.

If only they knew that things were about to get a whole lot worse for them.

* * *

Citadel  
 _Arm 1_

Nya yelled in a furor as she shot up from where she lay on the ground, a wicked shard of vase in hand, glinting in the dim light. It was a low-aimed blow, meant to cut at Vahl's legs and to have her drop to her knees so that Nya could overpower her and get a handle on the situation.

It may have played out well in Nya's head, but real life would end up disappointing her.

In fact, Nya's actions had been sluggish to the point of being entirely predictable. Vahl easily sidestepped the blow and Nya simply slashed at empty air. Vahl's impish gaze briefly turned incredulous before she shrugged and unleashed another kick towards Nya, this one aimed at her elbow.

Nya screamed and dropped the vase shard.

Vahl grinned and made a tiny leap into the air, kicking at Nya wherever she could reach. The helpless woman curled into a ball, her arms desperately trying to cover her visor so that Vahl could not crack it open with a well-aimed blow. Fortunately, that was not the fate Vahl had in mind for Nya. No, she had something a bit more sinister planned for her.

"Tricky of you," Vahl panted as she briefly bent over before straightening so that she could strike her boot into the small of Nya's back. "Tricky, tricky Nya'McLeod. Maybe there's some of that determination in you yet. I've wanted to see a glimmer of that ever since Eyzn described it to me. Even still, I'm disappointed!"

Glass flew in a wave into the air as Vahl sent another kick hurtling Nya's way, the shimmering fragments sparkling with stray rays of light caught from where they streamed through the window blinds.

A warm ripple of agony shot completely through Nya's form and she howled as the kick reflexively forced her to straighten out. Vahl seized this opportunity to grasp at Nya's head and deliver a few well-placed punches upon the side of her helmet. Vahl had to bite her lip to prevent her from gritting out her own discomfort (a natural side effect of punching metal with only the soft covering of an enviro-suit for protection), but Nya now quieted down to nearly-silent wails, her head lolling haphazardly. She was dazed, teetering on unconsciousness.

Now that Nya was subdued enough to be handled, Vahl took an evil pride in the fact that she was able to drag the other woman across the floor without much resistance. Nya's arms and legs lay limp at her sides, her eyes blinked slowly and uncomprehendingly, and her breathing slowed down to a near crawl. Approaching the body bag, Vahl rudely deposited Nya a foot away from the black sack, nudging her over with a foot so that Nya was pathetically crawling on her knees.

Nya's hands scraped along the carpet until they met the edges of the bag, perhaps unintentionally. The woman lifted her head and seemed surprised, likely a side effect of being hit repeatedly there, that she was touching this full body bag. A tremble rippled through the quarian and she tentatively looked up at Vahl, who gave a subtle glance towards the bag itself, an unsaid command.

"Open it," Vahl ordered in a hushed voice.

The most powerful mental fortitude in the universe would be tested by such an assault on the senses - one that Nya now had no hope of overcoming. The confusion, the pain, the simmering rage from her opponent were too much for her to handle. Nya faltered, breathing locking in place, quickly feeling her body grow helplessly hot within her suit. A broil began - she started sweating.

The beating of her heart became so apparent to the point that it was nearly paining her.

"I... don't… I don't…" she stammered, too scatterbrained to conjure a complete sentence. She looked down at the bag and back up at Vahl, the shine in her eyes begging for mercy. "I _c-can't…_ "

" _Of course_ you can't," Vahl snorted as she bent down again, superiority reflected in her gaze, filtered by her sand-colored visor. "Eyzn just doesn't see you the way I do. You're not special to him or to anyone else. You're nothing. You're just a vagabond who stumbled into a shallow attraction with a human. It's a downward spiral. Trust me, I know. The incongruences in trying to copulate with another race are simply too great for us to defeat. We've been dealt a bad hand, Nya. Humans and quarians just were not meant for one another. We're simply unable to satisfy them in the ways that they expect. These humans say that they want to make things work out, a manipulative attempt to continue to win over our loyalty, but in the end they always resort to finding their own pleasures from other people… because we will never be able to please them. And so it goes for countless other naive waifs who embark on the same misguided journey. I've seen it before because… I was with a human once."

Nya froze as she continued to stare at Vahl, who uttered a soft laugh and shrugged. "I know, you can't believe it either, right? Well, it's true. I had a human lover at one point. He was… kind… and gentle. I wanted to be with him forever, of course, but that was the stupid wish of a stupid girl. I should have known that he would turn to other humans when the frustrations of trying to be intimate with me did not fit into his schedule. I tried, you have no idea how much I tried to please him, but no matter how many times I became ill to the brink of death, he never seemed to appreciate what I had been sacrificing for him. In the end, I don't know what came over me - maybe it was the last in a long line of lovers he had been secretly communicating with, who knows - but I had finally had enough. One night, I caught him in bed with another woman. He was still asleep, too tired from his exertions, which meant that it was easy for me to walk up to where he slept so that I could slit his throat."

Vahl now pulled her knife from where it was sheathed at her boot. A brown trickle dried blood still clung to the metal surface. Nya wondered whose blood it was.

" _You've_ been spared that fate, foolish girl," Vahl taunted as she tapped the knife against the fearful Nya's visor, sending light ringing noises echoing through the apartment. "You'll never have to deal with the knowledge that you killed someone you once loved. Not exactly. For that, you should thank me. And Eyzn too. But I'm afraid I still need to instill in you the consequences of what shacking up with a human should entail. Look! Look at what lies before you!"

With a flourish and a wicked grin, Vahl gripped the zipper of the body bag after slapping Nya's hands away and, savoring one last glance, she viciously yanked it down, exposing the pale face of the corpse that lay within.

In the next instant, Nya's world shattered.

* * *

Citadel  
 _En route_

Sky-shattering metal and glass spires zoomed by at a breakneck speed through the windows of the skycar. The jagged maze of apartment towers and office buildings streamed into a monotonous gray blur with the occasional splash of color peppered in from the holographic advertisements. A high-pitched, but muted, whine droned into the cockpit, the only audible sign that the craft's engines were being strained to their limits.

The skycar was pitching and bucking wildly as Chandler tried to drive it. Rie was holding onto an armrest at the top of her door while she pressed a leg deep into the foot well to steady herself. Just because the skycar had acceleration and gravity dampeners did not mean that the brains of organics did not process such rapid changes of velocity and altitude without incident. Rie was feeling carsick at the lurching sights that were screaming past them as the skycar shot through the metallic avenues of the Citadel. She was not about to throw up any time soon from all the disorienting maneuvers, but she was in quite a lot of discomfort regardless.

 _Keep going_ , Rie thought, despite how sick she was feeling. _Faster. Faster. As fast as you can!_

"Spirits," Rie gulped as the skycar made a sharp left turn into one of the main traffic tunnels that had been burrowed straight through a large building, oval-shaped, and lined from top to bottom with searing blue lights. Advertisements of laughing asari promoting some skincare product looked to Rie like she was being taunted - she hated the glances those blueish-purple aliens were giving her, even if they weren't really there.

From the pilot's seat, Chandler shot her a grim look as his hands fumbled across the holographic interface. "Better keep hanging on," he said. "This is going to get a little ugly."

Once the skycar had escaped the confines of the tunnel, Chandler pulled the skycar up in what had to be a highly illegal maneuver - all flyable craft were not to depart from the designated traffic lanes on the Citadel. This was to prevent the likelihood of a mid-air collision by keeping all the ships oriented in a common direction, preventing a free-for-all for navigation of Citadel space.

Rie and Chandler's skycar had reached the center of the Citadel's structure - the circular ring where all five of the long arms connected at the central point. In essence, Chandler was performing a shortcut by flying upward into empty space so that he could connect to a new lane within Arm 1, which was where Nya's apartment was.

With lights of the superstructure streaming in from both above and below her, Rie had to shut her eyes as another bout of motion sickness overcame her.

Ordinarily, because the skycar was a rental, the automated software would have locked out all permissions for users to fly the thing themselves. VIs did all of the work regarding the actual transit, as it was determined that the decisions of a simple computer were vastly superior (not to mention safer by not lending its choices to unpredictability) to organics. However, it was an open secret amongst amateur coders that these VIs had some serious flaws regarding their security firewalls. Hundreds upon hundreds of hackers had managed to find a way to break through the layers and had uploaded their own cracks to the extranet for other people to use at their leisure.

Chandler just so happened to be in possession of one of these cracks, meaning that all he had to do was connect his omni-tool to the onboard VI, run the specified program that would auto-execute and… _voila_! Manual control was now at his disposal.

On the other hand, Chandler was not a trained pilot. He had been a soldier in the war, but he had received zilch on learning how to properly maneuver any flyable craft whatsoever. Rie's experience also ran on empty so it was not like, between the two of them, that any of them could be relied to somewhat operate a skycar in a controlled fashion. This was probably why the ride itself was so herky-jerky, tumultuous, and rife with steering issues. Making matters worse was the fact that they were pressed for time, as they were concerned about the possibility that Nya was in serious danger.

Every second wasted led to a higher probability of disaster.

 _Hold on, Nya_ , Rie silently pleaded. _Just hold on. We're coming to you._

The skycar suddenly banked to get into the nearest lane upon the requisite arm, C-Sec miraculously not on their tail despite how erratically Chandler was flying. Yet Chandler completely misjudged the rate of velocity that he had been approaching the lane and actually managed to plunge a few stories below the line of cars and trucks before he sheepishly yanked the craft back into place two seconds later.

Rie had on a terrified look, her eyes nearly bulging out of her sockets. The threat of a head-on collision at such high speeds tends to do wonders for one's adrenaline levels. She so desperately wanted to scream out something snarky to her husband, but in the heat of the action, she could not muster even a simple quip.

Chandler, at the very least, was cognizant of Rie's overall mood. Even the most obtuse of people could look upon Rie's face and determine that she was scared shitless.

"I _told_ you this was going to get rough," he tried to sound apologetic but his tone accidentally had a trace of a joking attitude.

" _Damn it!_ " Rie screeched as Chandler swerved to avoid rear-ending a taxi.

"Sorry," Chandler mumbled, definitely more contrite.

Upon further reflection, Chandler would have to be apologizing for the entire duration of the flight, because he was not a perfect human, and like many imperfect beings, he was prone to certain urges. One of which was a general lack of patience. After having wasted, in his opinion, several minutes waiting for a free skycar to be deposited to their location, Chandler had only been growing more and more indignant, even while he was travelling. He was searching for more shortcuts to take in his mind, relentlessly scanning the background for any out-of-the-way places that he could utilize to his advantage.

If Rie had been a bit calmer right about now, she probably could have helped suppress Chandler's impatience. Unfortunately for them both, this was a very strange and trying situation. The two of them were not exactly operating at their best right about now.

They would very soon pay the price. Karma catches up eventually.

Without sounding a warning, Chandler abruptly steered the skycar to the right, out of the main traffic lane and into a forest of yellow warning signs and flashing lights, creating a maze impenetrable and unrelenting to the amateur pilot. Rie let out an unintelligible noise as she realized that Chandler was steering them into a construction zone, a place where there existed hazards in three dimensions, but at that point there was little that could be done.

Scaffolding, exposed piping, and automated machinery littered the tiny tunnel that Chandler had inexplicably decided to drive them into. A series of beeping noises from automated proximity alarms blared at them, a warning to turn back, but Chandler had no room to turn around - not at his current speed. Bright halogen lights filled their eyes with blinding illumination, and the skycar shuddered as it briefly scraped along a side of the wall, shredding plastisteel and ruining the maroon paint.

Quick, jutting corners turned the tunnel into an obstacle course for Chandler to traverse, and to his credit, he did slow down in velocity enough to just barely take those turns. He was actually starting to settle into the groove of flying, and Rie spotted that Chandler was emitting a tight grin as he flew the skycar past hovering I-beams, heavy machinery, and construction drones that presented major obstructions as they fluttered to and fro within the alley, unknowing of the skycar that had made the fateful detour.

"You're crazy!" Rie finally screamed, her foot pressed into the well so far that she feared her toes would punch through the flimsy barrier.

"I'm not wasting anymore time!" Chandler hollered, his gaze now firmly centered upon the course in front of him.

Despite how well-placed Chandler's intentions were, he had remarkably failed to take stock of the possibility that his little diversion from the main path might not be so advantageous to his overall goal. A curious slip of the mind, given his penchant for rationality.

In the next few seconds, his worst nightmare was realized.

Chandler's poor piloting skills finally came looking for a reckoning as one black and yellow striped drone lazily floated out into the middle of the cluttered tunnel, bits of steel plating clenched between two hefty metal prongs. The drone ventured right into the path of the skycar, too late for Chandler to appropriately react in time.

The skycar, in a desperate attempt, tried to swerve to the side so that it could avoid a collision, but it was no use. The left side of the craft clipped the hefty drone, smashing its occupants around the interior a bit. The blow also dislodged the power kits to the drive core, disconnecting it, and causing the skycar to drop out of the air like a lead balloon. Fortunately, the acceleration dampeners within the skycar were still functional and there was only a two story drop to contend with while the skycar was essentially gliding. The floor of the tunnel was a mess with large and heavy equipment but the path in front of the doomed craft was miraculously clear.

A few heart-dropping seconds later and the skycar was in for a torturous ride as the smooth undercarriage made an ear-splitting shriek when the powerless ship made contact with the ground in an uncontrolled slide. Coils of tubing, bundles of pipes, and oddly enough, sheets of balsa wood were all smashed into bits and bounced off the hood of the craft as it plowed through the piles of collected materials.

Five seconds later, the skycar skidded to a stop, the back compartment smoking and useless. A minute later, Chandler and Rie stumbled from the wreck, a bit battered but alive. The two, after taking a moment to calm themselves down a bit, shared only weary looks, realizing that trading insults at one another would be useless.

Unsaid between them was the fact that they now had no way to make it to Nya's apartment in time. They had failed.

* * *

Citadel  
 _Arm 1_

This is how it feels to be Nya'McLeod right now:

Deep within that suit of hers, festering within her body, lies a cold pit. This pit is expanding, ravenous with hunger. It knows the body is feeling sorrow, it yearns for it. Eager with desire, it opens up, consuming the grief, channeling all the fear and pain into the infinite abyss. It cannot be closed. It ripples throughout Nya, growing, growing, growing…

The cold lingers. It infects Nya's very being. It becomes part of her very DNA, embedded deep down within cells interlinked with cells interlinked with cells interlinked with cells until every conceivable connection has frozen with the ultimate agony. Fibers interlaced with protein sequences wither and die. Portions of the mind close themselves off. Disbelief evolves into acceptance. Logic ceases to exist.

Nya's point of singularity has vanished. She cannot even comprehend _herself_ anymore. She has lost her sense of self, burned away in a flash.

It feels like teeth are gnawing at Nya's body all over. It's a rippling fire that burns without scarring. She's well past the point of tears. There's only horror, and the burgeoning warmth of a stabbing ache in her throat. Were she not already lying on the ground, she would have collapsed in a heap by now.

All it took was one simple look to bring her worst nightmare to life, even if she did not know it would amount to this.

Her hands caressed the dead face of her husband, gloved fingers softly pressing into his cold skin, the hair of his beard. Tangible proof… she had to know. She _felt_ him, looked upon him. It was enough for her mind to accept that he was gone.

" _S-Sam_ …" she croaked out, her throat flooded with sadness. All pretense of hatred, whatever fronts Nya had previously erected to cut herself off from her true emotions came tumbling down in seconds. Needless anger.

She stared uncomprehendingly into the closed eyelids of her human. What had been shimmering, blue eyes that had twinkled with a knowing secret were now closed forever. His mouth, capable of giving the most loving smiles, was slightly agape as if Sam were in the very beginnings of a yawn. He would never breathe again, never share another word with her again, never press his lips to hers in a sensual kiss.

She would never be able to admit her true feelings to Sam. Not after today.

To Nya, despite all that had transpired between them, she felt herself become more and more shut out from the real world as Vahl, the guards, her surroundings, all started to blur and wash away, leaving her alone with Sam's body, still halfway zipped up in the bag.

This cavernous feeling had started just below her gut, but now Nya felt that she was being consumed up to her eyes. Voracious and unrelenting, Nya now was starting to become wracked with dry sobs, now that such a significant part of her life had been ripped straight from her. It was like the time she had lost a limb. Worse, even.

It felt like someone had ripped out her heart.

No matter what she had said to Sam in the past, despite all the supposed declarations of hate and loathing, Nya's ultimate beliefs were exposed in an instant. Softly crying to herself, Nya cradled Sam's head against her as she lowered her own helmeted head to the floor, resting her visor upon the carpet as if she would be able to turn invisible so that no one could see her grief.

This had been the man that she had opened herself up to. She had confided in Sam her brightest dreams, her darkest secrets. She had trusted him with her health, her love, and he had gone above and beyond to accommodate her. At one point, he had truly loved her in a way that could never fully be described, a love that Nya had reciprocated in full. He had cared about her so much that he had been willing to start a family with her in the first place - making sacrifices that she had never fully considered or perhaps respected until now. It was _because_ she had loved him so much that she was crying now, anguished over his death.

At the very end, hatred gave way for love. It was just so unfair to Nya that she had only begun to see clearly when it was too late.

 _This isn't real,_ Nya thought over and over again as she sobbed and pressed her visor deeper into the carpet as she fiercely shut her eyes. _This isn't real. Sam can't be dead. He can't be dead. This isn't real. This isn't real._

"Alright, sweetheart, _enough_ ," Vahl sighed, a most unwelcome sound to Nya as she bent over and rudely grabbed Nya by the back of her hood, yanking her from the ground. "I can't stand the moping of girls."

" _NOOO!_ " Nya screamed as Vahl dragged her away, the image of Sam rapidly dwindling as she was carted off. She reached out impotently towards the body of the human, almost as if she could imagine an invisible force shooting from her fingertips to pull Sam towards her. "SAM! _SAAAM!_ "

"Keelah, you're insufferable!" Vahl scowled as she had to put some effort into her brutal manhandling of the other woman. Nya's legs caught on the carpet as they scraped along, but she had no energy left and whatever movements she made were too feeble to overcome Vahl's strength.

Whatever reserves Nya had left, they were just about drained. Her eyes glazed over as she began to hyperventilate. Nya was now completely catatonic, completely overcome from the death of her husband.

Looking up from what she was doing, handling Nya with as much care as she would give a sack of fertilizer, Vahl stared expectantly at the two guards flanking Sam's body who were still standing placidly by, their postures uncomfortably straight almost like they were embarrassed to bear witness to this spectacle.

"Care to watch?" Vahl said in a syrupy-sweet voice as she indicated Nya in her grip and the grim portents to come. "I can promise you an interesting show."

The two guards preferred to shuffle their feet and look away distractingly. Vahl gave a mental shrug - if they didn't want to bear witness to Nya's upcoming death, then that was their decision. All the fun would be solely reserved for Vahl, in this case.

Vahl was now muttering dirtily to herself as she jerked the deadweight Nya back into the room where she had previously been sleeping. Not giving any sort of care to her captive, Vahl strained her lower back as she picked Nya up slightly off the ground just so that she could throw her onto the bed. Nya flopped over onto her back, listless and limp. She stared serenely up at the ceiling, completely overwhelmed to the point where she had nearly lost all sense of her surroundings.

Vahl looked around the room, taking stock of the wide bed, the dressers, the desk, and the personal touches and accoutrements that helped give a lived-in sense to the entire room. A few picture frames were still positioned upon one of the nightstands and Vahl picked up one of them. The woman stared long at hard at an image of a suited Nya cradling the environmental bubble of her infant, in what had to have been the week that the baby had been alive. Vahl smirked to herself as she carelessly let the frame slip from her fingers, the electronic screen winking out as the black surface cracked thickly once it fell to the ground.

"This is where it happened, then," Vahl sighed as she indicated the bed upon which Nya was twitching in her delirium. "No doubt you took the opportunity to pervert yourself to that human in this room, upon this very bed. How many times, I wonder? Was your sickness worth the effort? Did your husband respect the struggles you made to keep him satiated?"

Nya was unable to answer as she was still convulsing with dry heaves, completely torn apart from this unwelcome revelation.

Vahl just rolled her eyes in disgust. "I wonder if he ever said that you were 'beautiful' to him? Did you ever stop think that he might have been lying? Perhaps it doesn't matter. Your human found his end before you did. Maybe, if life works a certain way, you'll have a chance to ask him soon enough."

Now Vahl reached into one of the pockets hooked into her belt and withdrew a clear syringe with a stubby tip. Inside the syringe sloshed a colorless fluid - a liquid strain of an amino acid that Vahl had no hope of pronouncing correctly. The amino acid had the simple acronym of ODAP, though, and unbeknownst to Nya, it was also a powerful neurotoxin. Not immediately fatal in small doses, but extremely debilitating nonetheless.

"Eyzn said not to leave a mess," Vahl simpered as she leaned over Nya momentarily. "But he didn't say that I couldn't play with my food before I eat it."

Not giving Nya any more time to flounder in confusion, Vahl reached out and pulled back a flap of Nya's hood so that she could access the miters embedded into the shoulder of her suit. The miters were dull colored, metallic ports that allowed vital fluids to be introduced into the circulatory systems of quarians without having to get an injection through the suit itself. All quarians had these implants - it was part of growing up with an enviro-suit. It was this workaround that Vahl was now exploiting as she carefully slotted the stub tip of the syringe into the leftmost miter and gradually began to push the plunger down, slowly introducing the neurotoxin into Nya's body.

Nya, at this point, had ceased in her struggling. She could have sworn that she felt something cold rush into her blood, right at her shoulder. There had been no resistance upon Nya's end in the last few minutes, even as Vahl was in the process of poisoning her. Any ordinary being would have continued to struggle, but there was none of that from Nya, just a detached calmness. All she wanted in that point in time… was her husband. She just wanted to be with Sam again, to hear his voice, see him smile, to know deep inside her that he had been one of the few people in her life to treat her with a shred of normalcy.

She missed him terribly and she knew that what was inside the vial that Vahl had just injected her with was the key to seeing Sam again.

Nya was meeting her fate with open arms, a serene look passing over her face.

But the tranquility of the moment quickly passed in a flash as Nya briefly made a look of concern before she felt a new sensation in her gut. Something was… writhing… uneasy. She only had a second before a boiling pain exploded in her stomach, causing her to cry out and to clamp her hands over the affected area before she curled into a ball on the bed.

Watching the entire thing play out, Vahl smiled as she calmly placed the empty syringe back into her pocket. From how Nya's initial reactions were going, the neurotoxin was already eating at her body with aplomb. The initial symptoms of an exposure to ODAP was that Nya would start to gain excitotoxic damage to neurons in her brain, caused by overstimulation of her glutamine receptors. Neuron damage translates into a very different, more obscure sort of pain for the host, able to embody itself into various forms. In this case, Nya's "stomachache" was merely a manifestation of a much larger problem at hand.

The ODAP would soon cause Nya to undergo oxidative stress. In minutes, the neurotoxin would eliminate all of Nya's motor functions to her lower body, rendering her permanently paralyzed in that area. There was little hope of curing Nya once the stages of the neurotoxic poison had progressed to that point - the strength of the dose would eventually claim her life within the hour - Vahl had made sure to give Nya a large enough dose to kill her. Nya's immune defense in her brain at detoxifying itself would result in perfectly healthy tissue being killed off.

Her weak immune system, a contentious source of trouble her whole life, would finally kill her.

While Nya continued to moan and twist upon the bed, Vahl crossed her arms as she found herself enjoying the show. Although now, from the direction of the foyer where her guards were located, there seemed to be some kind of commotion going on out there. Rustling, smashing, and overall muffled grunts were being projected into the bedroom and Vahl had half a mind to poke her head out and yell at her cadre not to start turning over the apartment until she had finished up in here. She didn't care how bored the guards got - she was going to savor this moment for as long as possible and that meant _no distractions_ whatsoever.

In any case, the noises quieted down without Vahl needing to intervene and she felt her blood pressure start to decrease as she concentrated solely on watching Nya slowly start to succumb to the neurotoxin in front of her. It was _fascinating_ to Vahl - she had never used ODAP as a means to kill someone before. She wanted to pay attention to exactly how it affected its victim - a perfect time to take notes.

"Fear not, Nya'McLeod," Vahl whispered. "Your suffering will end soon enough."

A brief shadow then fell over Vahl - a silhouette from someone standing in the doorway. Vahl nudged her head towards the person that was joining the two of them, but did not look all the way behind her.

"Decided to watch after all?" Vahl grinned, certain that one of her guards was approaching behind her. "Better hurry. She doesn't have much longer, now."

"That's ironic," a deep voice, far deeper than Vahl had expected, breathed just behind her. "One could say the same about _you_."

The voice registered with Vahl in less than a second. Faster than the eye could blink, she paled. Her body froze to ice and a gulp lodged in her throat painfully. All careful and cognitive thinking vanished only to be replaced by pure instinct and Vahl felt herself turning towards the source of the voice, her entire brain throwing up malfunction errors.

The worst part was that she _recognized_ this voice. But… it belonged to...

 _This is… impossible_ , Vahl thought, right before she turned completely back around. _No… No..._

Standing before her, a couple inches taller in height, with a weary look on their face, was a familiar-looking person that Vahl could have sworn, having seen them lying on the ground just moments ago, was dead. He was still dressed in simple pants and a tank top, with a hole in his top covering right at the stomach area. Dark streaks, of what Vahl could only assume was blood, spattered his skin upon his neck and arms, and in the vacuum of time that the two of them had locked eyes, the stranger cracked a crazed smile, the cold look of his blue eyes hardening with a killer's purpose.

"Surprise," Sam McLeod growled, right before he cocked his arm back to deliver the fiercest blow he would ever make in his life against the witch that was in the middle of killing his wife.

Vahl had barely enough time to blink as she saw the large fist hurtle towards her face.

* * *

 **A/N: Surprise, indeed.**

 **Once again, I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to leave a review for this story. Your feedback and support is what keeps me going, even during those moments when writer's block starts to set upon me. You have no idea how much of a help you guys have been, so I want you to know that I truly am grateful for the reviews and messages.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Dead Quarian: "The Execution" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_**

 **Race to Nya's Apartment: "Nitroglycerin" by David Buckley from the video game _Batman: Arkham Knight_**

 **The Widow Nya (Corpse Reveal): "Norman" by Steven Price from the film _Fury_**

 **Nya Begins to Die/Vahl Faces a New Enemy: "Revelation" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**


	16. Chapter 13: Intravenous

Blackness flowed over her like water, thick and choking. She struggled to stay afloat in the light, spluttering as the billowing and wavy barrier fluttered just out of reach.

Alone in her room, Nya started to drown in despair.

Never could Nya have conceived of a scenario like this in her life, one that could have delivered such a decisive and well-aimed series of mental knockout punches in such rapid fashion. From the moment that she had been abruptly awakened to now when she was writhing in pain upon her bed, fire searing all throughout her veins, she had been two steps behind the entire game, helplessly stumbling over herself in an attempt to catch up. She had been subject to an all-out assault, both physically and mentally at the hands of this… Vahl, this pawn of Eyzn.

Nya knew that her failure was about to become complete forevermore. The finish line to her salvation had been moved just out of her reach, right when she had nothing left. Maybe she had never even gotten close to reaching it at all. The end, having been teased upon her psyche for the last half hour, was now steamrolling its way toward her. There was nothing that Nya could do to stop it.

Through Nya's eyes, it looked like the entire room was starting to melt. Colors were becoming washed out and seemingly sliding off the very walls. Light took on a weird ambient effect and flared strongly into her retinas. Nya realized that, after things started to be projected in tricolor layers, that she was going through a hallucinogenic experience brought on by whatever it was that Vahl had injected into her body. It had to be a poison of some kind, she reasoned, one that would drive her crazy just before it killed her. Nya prayed that she would not have to suffer for much longer - at this stage, death was merely a kindness.

Yes… _exactly_ a kindness. This was the immeasurably preferable option available to Nya right now. She accepted her fate without hesitation. _Craved_ it, actually. It was a very sobering thing for Nya to consider, having this knowledge that she was about to die very soon. But she was not upset, not anymore. She had shed her tears after her links to her life had all been severed at once right in front of her.

Holding her dead husband had broken her, shattered her into a million pieces. It was the one thing that would have brought her into this state of mind - knowing that the last remnant of her family was dead.

No one had been more surprised than Nya when the body of her husband, Sam, had been unveiled right in front of her. It had been like a ghost, the last vestiges of her animosity, had rushed out of her body and departed her for good, leaving only sorrow and regret behind. Months and months of bottled emotions detonated within her, causing her unbearable pain now that they would never have a chance to become unleashed. Nya had wanted the floor to open up and swallow both her and Sam right then and there, to find peace and to follow her husband to wherever she had gone to.

If there was an afterlife, Nya was determined to meet Sam there.

Never in her life had she wanted him dead. Nor had she ever wanted Sam hurt. Nya had been wandering in this listless state for so long that she had lost all ability to reason, torn between pushing the human away or finally accepting him with open arms once again, knowing that he was truly sorry for what he had done to her in the past.

Or… what he _said_ that he had done to her.

Nya thought they would have had more time together. More time to talk things over, perhaps. More chances to talk, even after all their fractious confrontations. It was still all a blur to her - she had been lacking the capacity for rational thought for weeks. Maybe Nya was finally sick and tired of feeling like she was being rendered into tiny pieces from her aloneness, carrying this heavy weight of hostility towards the only person who had ever declared his love for her.

But she would be burdened with this painful weight forever. Or at least the next few minutes.

Tired of all the anger, the sadness, the anguish, Nya surrendered herself to the boiling neurotoxin being pumped through her blood, wanting to feel complete again. Maybe Sam would find it in himself, when they next met in the next life, to forgive her for her behavior towards him.

In fact, Nya thought with a tiny smile, she _knew_ he would forgive her without any hesitation. He had always been more magnanimous than she gave him credit for.

"Fear not, Nya'McLeod," the blistering voice of Vahl crept into her ears. Nya tried to focus her eyes upon the woman standing over her, but an intense wobbling effect had come over her, making it impossible to stare at any single point. "Your suffering will end soon enough."

 _I hope you're right_ , Nya thought miserably. _Still… thank you for this._

Then there was a brief movement of a reflected glare in the corner of Nya's eye: a dark blob of a silhouette that walked into the doorway, blocking out a decent chunk of illumination. Distracted from the inherent movement, Nya faintly stirred in response.

Vahl did not seem distracted in contrast, but her call over to the silhouetted figure was glibly made. "Decided to join us after all? Better hurry. She doesn't have much longer, now."

The fact that there was now an audience witnessing her demise was somewhat upsetting to Nya. She would rather have her death be more of an ignominious affair instead of having a cluster of people all scrutinize and appraise her closely - proof that in her last moments, she would die with more enemies than friends.

But in the next moment, Nya would be nearly startled out of her reverie.

"That's ironic," a low voice whispered, intense grit scraping through every word. "One could say the same about _you_."

That sound… that familiar voice… it couldn't be.

Now Nya _knew_ she was hallucinating.

Desperately trying to peer through the nebulous fog that had been thrown over her vision, Nya strained herself as she squirmed upon the bed, every muscle strand crying out in agony. Unable to pierce the shadow, though, Nya finally faltered and gave up with an explosive sigh and her body flopped down onto the bed in a last act of capitulation, resigning herself to the fact that her final hope was all a fantasy created by her mind in a futile effort to ease her transition.

At least, if this was all a dream, then it was a very good one. Maybe there was some harmonious reason why she would dream of this person in her last moments. Her retribution would be absolute.

A lone tear ran down her cheek as Nya wistfully smiled, succumbing to the poisonous fire.

" _Sam…_ " she breathed in a lasting sigh.

* * *

Revenge could not have picked a better representative to be its incarnate form.

All sound in my ears had been drowned out the moment that I had uttered " _Surprise_ " to Vahl's laughably dumbstruck face. In retrospect, it could have been a humorous moment to witness this evil bitch's expression as the gears visibly cranked and ground against one another in her head, trying to make sense of what was ostensibly an impossible occurrence.

For reasons understandable, I was not in a laughing mood.

After all, I was in quite a bad way already. I had one raging headache, my chest was hurting like hell, I was bleeding from shallow wounds in my gut and my throat, bruises coated my arms and legs, and to top it all off, I apparently now had a deep scratch on my left cheek! By all rights, I should have been two seconds away from falling completely apart, but the mere sight of what lay before me: Vahl standing next to my wife who was writhing in pain - poisoned, no doubt - filled me with, I cannot emphasize more, what had to be the most appalling, the most searing, the most instantaneous shot of rage and adrenaline all given to me at the same time.

My own irritants vanished in seconds. The truth could not be more palpable to Vahl any longer. I was alive and I was mad as hell.

As fast as I could move my arm, I shot out my limb in a rapid blur. My fist caught the chin of Vahl's visor perfectly with a sickening _crack_ , throwing her head over heels onto the bed. My knuckles gave a knowing throb from punching the hard metal of the quarian's helmet, but I was still capable of dishing out more punishment. I could afford to take a few knocks if that meant I was delving out more pain than I was receiving.

I wanted to hurt this woman… so very badly.

Vahl only gave out a surprised grunt as she toppled over onto Nya's lower legs, her arms now splayed out upon the soft cushioned surface. Both woman took no notice of the other, especially in Vahl's case, who was now shaking her head frantically as her eyes rolled around in her sockets. A hefty blow, she must have been quite discombobulated.

Fear grew in Vahl's eyes after I let out a piercing yell and dived upon the bed as well to continue the fight. My hands automatically locked around her throat and began to squeeze. I clamped down upon Vahl's windpipe with all my strength, spittle flying from my mouth as I yearned to crush her trachea with my bare hands. I screamed a piercing note, one that emphasized every single solitary iota of fury that had ever resided within me.

Unfortunately, Vahl had recovered a little more quickly than I would have figured and, even though her eyes were now bulging from the pressure that I was exerting upon her, she managed to twist her body, sending the two of us rolling from side to side on the bed as we both grappled for control.

Poor Nya had progressed into a delirium by now thanks to the neurotoxin sloshing around in her system, muttering nonsense words and trembling heavily as her eyes shook all around her head. Vahl and I were locked into a heated confrontation at this point and the both of us could not control our momentum as we tumbled this way and that, our bodies sometimes running over Nya's lower legs as we vied for supremacy.

I tried to growl out a threat to the enraged Vahl, but it came out as a garbled and opaque mess through my teeth. Still, it helped sell my demonic look.

From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nya lift her arms up towards her face, making grunting noises as she did so. She was spluttering now, almost completely incomprehensible. I then realized that Nya was starting to choke as a result of the toxins she had ingested and, in her manic state, she was rapidly losing air as she struggled to breathe. It seemed like she felt she was being stifled and that she needed to access as fresh source of oxygen.

She was going to pull off her helmet, right here in this room.

"Nya!" I yelled out to her, a warning to snap her out of it, but Vahl grabbed at my shoulder and the two of us fell heavily off the bed together. We landed in a tangled heap, a thrashing mass of limbs, but I was only getting more and more frantic knowing that my wife was probably about to subject herself to a massive allergic reaction in the next ten seconds.

I winced a bit as Vahl openly hit me on the side of my head, but I had so much adrenaline and endorphins going through my system that I barely felt the blow at all. Truth be told, it just made me angrier.

I caught Vahl's flailing limb, simultaneously kicking out at the quarian with my free leg to deliver a few solid wallops, and wrenched her arm close to my face - close enough so that I could open my mouth wide and bite down upon her arm with a vicious chomp.

Vahl screeched in pain, her head being thrown back as I furiously bit down on the alien's limb. My teeth were unable to penetrate Vahl's enviro-suit, but the sheer force of the bite itself upon her triceps had to be excruciatingly awful. I was snarling like an animal, no longer appearing human, my eyes lit with a maniacal fire, drool streaming around the corners of my mouth as I latched my teeth into the terrible woman's suit.

After a few more seconds, I released my jaw, a series of indentations now marking Vahl's suit where I had bitten her, only to grasp Vahl's wrist as she tried to retract it. Tendons fueled with incredible tensile strength, I squeezed the alien's frail wrist in a hand and I felt a subtle shift occur within her arm.

Bones in the quarian's wrist crackled and snapped. Tiny fragmentations of ossein burst within Vahl's limb, creating micro-tears in the cartilage and sinew of her arm. Blood pooled from burst vessels, and sheared away pieces of her skeleton scraped tortuously against one another.

Vahl just stared uselessly at her maimed limb for a second, but all that seemed to do was make her even more incensed.

With one of her arms out of the picture, Vahl's decision in mounting an offensive attacked seemed brazen, but caution was never this woman's strongest suit. She lashed out a boot, striking me in the chin, and successfully managed to disengage away from me, her still-functioning hand grasping for the knife that she always kept at her side.

" _I'm going to peel your skin off and make you into a rug, you fucker!_ " she screamed as her knife left its holster noiselessly, her voice nearly giving out from the sheer volume of her outburst.

I did not respond to the shout but leapt to my feet in earnest to meet her. Vahl was now slashing away at me crazily with her combat knife rather jerkily, without form. Clearly the immobilization of one of her hands was distracting her or throwing her off balance, but that still meant that she was a great danger to everyone in the room.

Nya, especially.

Steel whistled as it hissed past my ear, which was evidently the knife that had slashed away at my cheek while I had been… otherwise indisposed. Vahl was grunting crazily as she swung the knife in wild arcs, determined to at least tear at me in some way. Her eyes sprang out at me behind her dusty visor and she gave a low laugh as she mistook my backpedaling to be an indication of my fear towards her.

Actually, that was the furthest thing from the truth. I was just giving myself some room to hurl myself at her at the right time when one of her next stabs left her flank obviously exposed.

Lo and behold, that precise moment occurred in the next three seconds as Vahl, impatient to end things between us, howled as she lunged towards me with the knife, intent on sinking the blade deep into my gut. Chemical reactions slowing down time in my favor, I easily sidestepped the attack, giving myself a clear view and place for me to slam my fist upon the side of her stomach.

Vahl bent over with a ragged cough and I used the opportunity to grab at her knife-wielding hand in an effort to wrench it out of her grip. The next several seconds were a series of mad moments as it was just the two of us struggling over possession of the bladed weapon. Our combined efforts meant that the knife was just being waved all over the place, capable of putting an eye out if someone happened to be standing in the wrong place. At one point, the knife flashed towards me and briefly sliced into the skin of my abdomen, but the cut itself was shallow and easily ignored. I pushed back and the knife then slammed into Vahl before I gave a twist and suddenly the weapon was flying end over end through the air, landing somewhere silently upon the carpet, out of sight.

Now that Vahl was finally disarmed, the _real_ fight could begin.

My face twisted with rage as I laid a hand upon the side of Vahl's head and violently slammed her helmet down upon a nearby desk, splintering the wooden surface and causing all the tchotchkes and random components that had been lying atop it to all jump into the air and clatter to the ground. Vahl made an awkward noise as her world turned sideways, culminating in a nasty pain upon the side of her head.

To make matters worse for the hapless quarian, I slammed my elbow down upon her head quite heavily, since I already had her pinned there. Within her skull, the blow caused Vahl's brain to bounce into the bone cavity, squishing the gelatinous fluid and causing a concussion. Vahl's eyes widened and her limbs jolted as I pummeled her repeatedly with my fists, intent on grinding her into dust.

I could only look upon my brutal work with a cold sort of calculated menace. I felt no sympathy for Vahl, not after what she had done. I had no desire to level quips in her face for I would derive no pleasure from such an act. I just wanted to have her broken in my hands, to finally dish out some of the repercussions that had been awaiting her ever since she had decided to play a role in fucking up my life.

Meanwhile, behind me, Nya had been tossing and turning upon the bed, her fingers finally hooked into the catches for her helmet release. With a miniscule click and a tiny hiss of air, the crimson visor came free from the helmet's housing, exposing her face to the air as she emitted a loud gasp.

I turned at the noise, finding Nya frothing from the mouth, her gray face fearful and panicked. I screamed in alarm, horrified at seeing Nya so exposed and vulnerable. My wife started to convulse and make horrid gulping noises as the bubbling foam dribbled from her mouth. I had to end this bout with Vahl immediately.

Grasping at the bits of fabric that lined Vahl's back, I grunted as I slid her head along the desk in a quick maneuver. What little items remained on the desk bounced off of the quarian's visor as she was unceremoniously shoved along its surface.

I gave a fierce bellow as I gripped the tubes snaking into the back of Vahl's helmet, using that as leverage to lift her upper torso off of the desk, just so that I could smash her head her into the mirror that made up part of the wall. Vahl rebounded upon the reflective surface with a hideous crack. The blinking light upon her vocabulator was now sputtering in a pathetic ember, its surface spiderwebbed with fractures. Standing on her own two legs again, Vahl stumbled in the middle of the room, blinking drunkenly, body swaying dangerously as a result of the concussion she had just received.

Vahl folded as I delivered a blow firmly upon her solar plexus. She retched, but had nothing in her stomach to throw up. I then sent another elbow hurtling downward while Vahl was still bent over, this time upon her kidneys. The quarian fell to a knee, hurting from several places at once. Prickling with anger, I used my own knee to savagely deliver another crack upon her visor, a blow which sent Vahl hurtling to the floor upon her back.

Another moan from Nya reached my ears and I turned to look at her. She was lying sideways upon the bed, eyes fluttering in a daze. She seemed to blearily comprehend the fight that had been transpiring around her all this time. Her eyes caught mine and I swore that I saw a glint of recognition pass over her expression, her mouth briefly curling into a satisfied smile, before I saw Vahl stumble back to her feet in the corner of my eye, her arms raised to attack me.

" _No!_ " I roared as I sprang forward, catching Vahl handily and brutally shoving her back into a nearby dresser. The shelves, disoriented by the blow, hurtled off the rails and spilled to the ground, sending several garments and assorted items tumbling upon the carpet. The wooden supports cracked and splintered, sending shards of dust spewing into the air.

With Vahl trapped within the dresser, I laid into her with all my strength. Blow after blow after blow hammered the quarian's body, each one bringing me closer and closer to being even with all the agony that she had helped impart on me. I must have broken several of her ribs simply from smashing her with my fists, but I was not paying attention to that very much. I merely increased the speed of my attacks, scared out of my life for Nya's safety and how Vahl had jeopardized it so.

Now fully freaked out myself, the beat of my heart pounding away, I grasped a fistful of Vahl's suit and yanked her free of the dresser. I brought her close to my face so that she could comprehend just how much she had failed - the proof being the fact that I was still alive.

I then leaned back and slugged her one last time in the face.

Vahl's head was smashed completely to the side, a thick fissure now running down the side of her visor. The quarian's legs gave out in less than a second and she pitched backward, which caused her to crumple atop a chair that had been placed at the side of the room.

But the back of Vahl's head impacted heavily with the top of the chair, right at the base of her spine.

I heard a snap.

" _Aaaah!_ " I heard Vahl cried out, and then she was on the floor, spread-eagled, not moving.

Timidly, breathing hard, I crept forward to where Vahl now lay on the ground. I thought I had done a number on her, but I had no idea yet at just how badly things had just gotten for the woman here.

Vahl's eyes were moving around helplessly, locked in her sockets, but it was the fact that no other part of her body was moving was an indication that something had clearly gone wrong. With my foot, I nudged her leg but I found that there was no resistance at all in that limb. The muscles weren't working properly. I then bent down and lifted up Vahl's arm before I let go. I merely stared as the quarian's arm dropped to the ground.

Damn. In my professional medical opinion: she was all kinds of fucked up.

"You're finished," I whispered to the terrified woman, who was now starting to breathe rather quickly, in frantic, shallow puffs, as she visibly strained to lift even a finger a millimeter from its current position.

Needless to say, her body refused to respond to her commands and it was unlikely that it ever would again.

Vahl then began making ragged screeching noises as she struggled to turn her head towards the doorway, still retaining a scant bit of functionality in that area. I followed her gaze to find that one of the guards that had accompanied Vahl into the apartment was standing in the boundary between the bedroom and the living room, a large duffel bag clamped in a firm hand. The guard did not make a move toward the both of us, oddly enough, preferring to stand placidly by and watch as I stood over his maimed superior.

"Help me, you wretch!" Vahl screamed from where she lay to the guard. "Finish the job! Kill this bosh'tet!"

Instead of obeying Vahl's commands, the guard simply deposited the duffel bag with a heavy thump upon the ground and smoothly knelt down next to it. The guard's hands delicately and precisely moved to the zipper, taking his sweet time in unfurling what it contained.

Vahl, on the other hand, was only getting more and more hysterical at this delaying tactic. "What are you _waiting_ for?!" she wailed. " _Kill him!_ "

The guard just gave her a long, unreadable look, utterly silent, before he continued unzipping the duffel bag wide open. The suited man then ruffled the edges of the bag to reveal a litany of oddly shaped items inside. They looked glossy and polished in the low light - they appeared to be pieces of some sort of armor set.

But the weird (and familiar) thing that struck me was that they were all colored… yellow.

The guard then stood straight up above the armor pieces and abruptly yanked his hood back, exposing the dull glint of his uncovered helmet. Vahl and I watched in a stunned silence as the guard then proceeded to embark on what was perhaps the most unpredictable of actions: he brought his hands up towards the helmet clasps and, in a matter of seconds, yanked the entire contraption off in one go, wires and all.

Yet underneath the helmet of the guard was not the pasty gray skin that I had come to associate with quarians, nor was there anything resembling an organic expression staring back at me.

Instead I found a set of dual aqua-colored optics shining back at me.

"Oh… my god," I murmured in a wonder, a smile creeping along my face. "Sagan, you beautiful son of a bitch!"

My next thought was: _How the hell did that geth manage to fit inside that suit?_

"Samuel," the geth reported in his trademark deep voice, his curved head looking comical atop the skinnier profile of the guard he had been impersonating all this time. "We are pleased to see that you are operational once more."

Sagan then flexed his limbs a certain way and portions of the enviro-suit then began shedding off of the geth's limber frame in seconds. Bits of metal and fabric tumbled to the ground as more and more of Sagan's torso and limbs became exposed. It was so strange to find out that, in order for Sagan to fit himself into the restricted enviro-suit (which I don't know how he managed to steal in the first place) he had removed all of the bulky bits of armor that had been wreathed around him, retracted the large antenna upon his back, and had adopted a slouch to help condense his posture and to also not draw too much attention to himself. Apparently that was why Sagan had an entire duffel bag's worth of his armor all collected in one place, detached from his figure. Still, it was odd to see the layers upon layers of gray synthetic muscle strands coil their way up and around each of Sagan's limbs. The true form of the geth underneath that armor was more organic than I had figured.

The sight of the freakish and unclothed geth only unnerved me for a few seconds. Vahl, meanwhile, was shrieking in denial.

"You… you _desecrator!_ " the disabled quarian howled at the geth. "That suit was not meant for you! You're a violation! A stain on our existence! We should have finished your extinction long ago!"

"Enough out of you," I grumbled as I sprang up from where Vahl lay and headed over to where Sagan was now methodically clasping his armor around himself once more. I held out a hand for Sagan to shake, forgetting to consider if the geth even knew of such an organic protocol, but I needn't have worried for he accepted the hand with a surprisingly delicate grip. "Sagan… as always…"

If I had not known better, I could have sworn that the geth had swelled with pride.

"There is no need for you to say any more, Samuel," he said gently.

That was fortuitous, because I did not know how to acknowledge my gratitude, so I stayed silent. It turned out that just a look was enough.

A pathetic sniffle then caught my attention.

Suddenly remembering the most pertinent of issues, I hastily went over to where Nya was residing, still on the bed, still unmasked. Her face was a bit of a mess - foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth, a trail of snot leaked from a nostril, and one of her eyes was a bit bloodshot. Fraught with panic, I pressed the back of my hand to her forehead, finding it hot but not blazing. No fever, no allergic reaction. It was unlikely that Nya would be suffering symptoms related to exposure to the air now that I had a chance to think - even though her immune system was not familiar with most of the people in the nearby vicinity. The expensive air scrubbers had been working overtime to purge the volume of the apartment of any potential pathogens. No, whatever Nya was suffering from, it was far beyond a simple reaction.

A clear vial lay near the foot of the bed, empty. I picked up and checked the label. Lucky of me that Vahl had not bothered to remove the identifying sticker. _ODAP_ , it read. Simple way of condensing the name of the compound _Oxalyldiaminopropionic acid_. A primary contributor of the disease lathyrism, a neurological ailment. But… how to treat such a thing here? There was no telling how much time I had left to treat Nya or if I could remember the correct procedure for doing so.

While I was thinking away, Nya murmured below me, her eyes finally reaching my own. Weakly raising her arm up, she grasped my hand in hers, her eyes beginning to water.

"Not… a dream," she gasped, her fingers clenching onto mine, unwilling to let go lest I might vanish.

"Don't worry," I assured her as I rubbed my thumb along the back of her hand. "I'm still here, Nya."

"H-How? You… but you… were dead."

I looked over at Sagan briefly at that. "Not exactly. But that can wait. We need to get you better now."

Grief flashed across Nya's face, understanding beginning to sink in. "Is it too late for me?"

"Not if I can help it."

I began to push myself off the bed, but Nya fiercely held on. "Stay with me," she begged, her voice a fragile whisper.

"I'll only be gone just a little bit," I assured her as I patted her cheek, my fingers rather cold against her warm flesh. I still had a ways to go before I got back to my normal body temperature. "Not even a minute."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

After taking one last lingering glance at Nya, who seemed as vulnerable as an infant (a distinction which I painfully noted), I then rushed into the bathroom where I kept a gigantic med kit, filled completely to the brim - an argument could be made that we had been keeping a small pharmacy right under our sink. The reasoning for having this nearby was simple - marrying a quarian made me consider all of the possibilities regarding Nya's overall health as well as the contingencies that I would need to put into place should the worst occur.

Was I glad that I had the foresight to keep this med kit around.

Frantically, now knowing what to look for, I hunted for the necessary vials that I knew would be crucial in saving Nya's life and helping her come down from her overdose. I set aside a couple syringes, an IV bag, and some tubing, willing my fingers to still themselves while I continued to search.

"Where are they? Where are they?" I murmured out loud as I scanned the labelled rows. "Methionine… cysteine. Need methionine and cysteine. Amino acids. Sulfur-containing amino acids. Only those two have sulfur incorporated into proteins. Sulfur can leach the ODAP from the blood. Make sure they're dextro. Levo will just make things worse. Does the application of the amino acids increase circulatory production? Heat denatures the ODAP. Makes it inert. Shit… shit…"

My string of run-on sentences to myself ended as abruptly as it started once I located the medications that I had been seeking. I bundled all the supplies up and practically sprinted out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. In that time, Sagan had dragged the immobile Vahl back out into the living room, giving us some peace and quiet from all her yowling. I spread out a towel upon the covers and laid out all the materials that I had gathered on it. Nya roughly gasped next to me, her eyes watching my every move.

I procured two syringes and measured out the required doses of each amino acid, making sure that the levels were accurate to the marked notches. I also took a moment to prepare the IV that I was about to introduce into Nya's system. The IV bag contained a saline that carried a similar sodium chloride concentration found in quarians, a volume expander. The IV would dilute blood flow and alleviate stress on the circulatory system with more oxygen being available to the tissues. This would be instrumental in helping to denature the proteins of the ODAP if I could turn Nya's body temperature up a couple degrees.

"Lie still," I ordered Nya, who obeyed immediately as I leaned over to pull up a flap of her suit that covered her access control miters, the same miters that had allowed Vahl to inject her deadly neurotoxin.

There were three ports embedded into the shoulder of her suit, a rough gold color. I inserted the IV into one of the ports and, after making sure the tubing was secure and that the bag was hanging from a nearby rack, I flipped the valve to allow the saline solution to begin rushing directly into Nya's bloodstream.

"Uh," Nya clearly muttered.

My face fell and I scanned her face for any sign of pain. "Something hurt?"

"No," Nya dimly shook her head, her eyes fluttering closed. "It's just kind of cold."

My features did not warm back up, mostly because that I knew that things were definitely not going to get all that comfortable for Nya in the near future. Wilting a bit in preparation, I procured the first syringe - the one filled with methionine - and made sure to check that there were no air bubbles trapped near the plunger. I then inserted the tiny needle into one of the open miters, hearing a series of soft clicks transpire as I did so.

With my thumb now poised over the plunger, I looked at Nya for confirmation. "First of two doses," I announced to her in a clear voice while I slowly injected the contents of the syringe into her.

Nya closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, managing to adopt a peaceful expression. There was barely a reaction on her end as the methionine flowed into her bloodstream, but that was all to be expected. The real question was how she was going to react once the _next_ syringe would be introduced.

That was what worried me so.

I called Sagan over and seconds later he stepped into the bedroom. I could still hear Vahl screaming from where Sagan had deposited her, who apparently had been calling for our heads to be struck upon pikes for the last ten minutes. Sagan and I ignored her, for there were more important matters at hand.

"You're going to need to hold her down," I told the geth as I indicated Nya. "By the shoulders."

The geth quickly obeyed and provided a gentle but firm pressure upon Nya's shoulders. Nya was starting to look increasingly worried, even more so as I brought the syringe with cysteine up to bat. I had to creep up a little bit more onto the bed as I prepared the next dosage, my heart beating noticeably faster, so hard the vibrations were quaking in my throat.

"Okay, Nya," I breathed as I looked into her imploring eyes, "I have to give you this if you're going to live. It's going to hurt like hell, but we can't avoid that."

"How much will it hurt?" Nya asked, trying so hard to be brave.

I bit my lip, uncertain if she wanted the truth or not. "A lot," I finally admitted.

"How much is a lot?"

"A lot," I shook my head.

Nya made a groaning noise but leaned her head back in acceptance. I glanced at Sagan, not knowing if I was prepared enough for what was to come next. Relegating myself to what I had to do, I leaned back over Nya and inserted the final syringe into one of the open miters upon her shoulders.

Breathing hard, I began the process of depressing the plunger, slowly injecting the cysteine through the cybernetic ports.

Things quickly accelerated from there.

Immediately, Nya's eyes opened wide and she uttered an effervescent moan as her breathing rapidly escalated in tempo. There was no period of time where she had to adjust to the pain, it was upon her in a blink of an eye. Her arms instinctively raised to push me away - Sagan had to move his hands lower so that he could shove Nya's limbs back down, giving me more time to fully inject the syringe's contents.

Cysteine was not as simple to introduce as any other ordinary vaccine - once it reacted with the methionine and the ODAP, the sulfur-based amino acids tended to have a strong reaction with each other, producing a sensation that felt like one was boiling underneath her skin. It would start out as an irritating itch but such a reaction rapidly progressed to a burn, the sort of state that Nya was in right now. She was shrieking, sobbing in pain, but I had to inject the cysteine slowly lest the reaction become too great for Nya to handle. If introduced too fast, it could induce major cardiovascular problems.

But that meant Nya would have to be hurting for a longer period of time.

One of Nya's flailing hands caught my face near my eye, causing me to recoil in surprise. I began to shout in defiance, clamping my hands together upon the syringe as I now used both thumbs to gradually sink the plunger down further and further, each miniscule twitch of my muscles threatening to spill more of the crystal-clear fluid into Nya's body, her antidote, the key to her salvation.

"Hold her!" I screamed at Sagan.

Below me, Nya howled.

I continued to grit my teeth as the liquid in the vial was pushed down millimeter by millimeter. Growls escape through my roughened throat, a warm and wet sensation trickling at the back of my mouth. Nya was still crying out, every square inch of her body burning so hotly it must have felt like she had been dipped in lava. The reactions from the sulfur in the amino acids against the neurotoxin were working, but damned if it was not paining her greatly.

Still, Nya wept.

Just a few more seconds longer, I told myself, fighting to stay atop of Nya as she thrashed this way and that. Tears streamed down her face, more foam bubbled from her mouth, and I felt heat radiate in waves from her body as she became possessed by the urge to escape the pain by any means necessary. This long and painful process was taking its toll on the both of us, and as I saw the last few drops of cysteine vanish from the syringe, I uttered a shout of finality and withdrew the syringe, leaping off of Nya with a gasp.

Nya's cries were silenced in seconds and for a brief moment, my heart stopped for I imagined that the combined cost upon Nya's body had been too great, but I relaxed as I saw that her chest was rising up and down in long, labored breaths. She was still alive. The amino acids had finally quelled all the damage that the neurotoxin had been wreaking upon her.

Grateful at this development and rather exhausted, I slowly lowered myself onto the bed upon my stomach, burrowing my head in the comforter as tiredness quickly came upon me. Suddenly, I had the overwhelming urge to sleep for a day, perhaps even a week, maybe even two weeks. Such a lethargy I had never known in a while was now greedily infecting me, wheedling me to take a trip to slumberland. As much as I dearly wanted to accept such an inclination, I still had things to do here before I nodded off into another coma.

Now unfettered by the notion of Nya dying before my eyes, I lifted my head and slowly crawled my way over on the bed to her, my best friend, my wife.

My betrayer.

 _How?_ I marveled to myself as I found my heated instincts softening as I looked upon her anguished face, who was still recovering from all the agony placed upon her. Even as I tried to uproot my angry inclinations toward her, they turned out to be as fleeting as a gust of wind. How did this happen? How could I make such a huge attitude shift towards how I felt about her? Nya had been the one responsible for my imprisonment, for god's sake. It had been her cooperation with Eyzn that had sealed my fate for the past four months.

So why did I hardly feel any anger towards her now?

Maybe hatred would not be of any use, at least not now. It would be untimely of me to bring such an uncomfortable topic up, especially since the both of us had just had our lives flash before our eyes in two separate events. Looking upon Nya's incapacitated form, I realized that whatever vileness I had been saving to spew in her direction would be simply useless and uncouth right now. I would rather have hugged Nya in lieu of cursing her in this moment.

No matter what, I knew that it would be a huge challenge to overcome when I was going to have to confront Nya with her treachery sooner or later. But not now. Definitely not now.

It was just impossible for me to bring myself to hate her.

So how come it was so easy for her?

Or… did she still really hate me?

Whatever truths now existed regardless of my initial perception of my life, I now had to begin building my comprehension back up again. I tried to understand, to interpret the cluster of undefinable emotions that fluttered in the air between Nya and I, a hazy cloud whereupon our true feelings were revealed in brief flashes as if we were fighting to penetrate an extremely dense fog. Even unmasked, taking Nya's penchant for being terrible in masking her facial expressions into account, I could not seem to decipher my wife's ulterior affections for me, whether they existed or not.

I kept my face straight, saying nothing as I felt compelled to at least help out Nya right now. She was still exhausted and a tiny bit delirious from her poisoning ordeal - her eyes were half-closed and her hands were resting upon her stomach as she raggedly breathed while in a partial slumber. I procured a towel from the nearby stand and helped wipe away the tears, drool, and snot from Nya's face, knowing that she would be completely embarrassed if she realized that I was looking at her in such a state. The woman had always harbored nagging little doubts about her overall appearance (perhaps a shared trait in quarians) but I would hate to imagine her freak-out if she comprehended the fact that I could see her face while she was perhaps looking at her absolute worst.

Not that I could blame her. Hell, even I would be mortified in some fashion if my face had been bedraggled from all the crap gushing from every hole onto my skin. This way, I could spare her some tiny humiliation.

And there I go again. Now all of a sudden I'm _caring_ about Nya. Attending her, wiping her face, saving her life. This had been my base instinct all along rather than simply leaving her to die. I had completely disregarded the fact that Nya had screamed out her hatred to me months beforehand… yet the first thing that had popped into my head, upon seeing her being attacked, was to protect her.

Residual familial bond, maybe? Or perhaps a genetic inclination?

Or maybe… even taking everything into account and not making any more excuses, could the real reason for my behavior simply be the fact that I still _loved_ her?

Regardless on how the both of us should feel at this time, it seemed like we had pushed aside our mutual acrimony after taking stock of what had been a terrible last fifteen minutes. Weirdly, in Nya's case, it seemed that she had completely forgotten her previous disposition entirely, as she gazed at me with a soft look of relief and gently touched a hand to my chin.

"It is… impossible," Nya murmured as her fingers traced my face, including the new scar on my cheek that reflected a similar wound marring her own cheek, finding no indication that I was a mirage. "You… you weren't alive back there. I… I _held_ you! You were… d-dead…"

I reached up and tenderly took Nya's hand in mine, struggling to hold down my hope that this moment of normalcy was going to last. But I dearly, dearly wished that this emotional frailness would never be lost between us again, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.

"No," I shook my head. "Not dead. Not completely. Just in a deep coma - a state of hibernation."

Nya looked at the hole in my shirt, the one that had been caused from the gunshot to my stomach, the fabric still crusted with dried blood. She plied a finger to the wound but relented when I stiffened a bit and made a tiny wince of pain.

"Sorry!" Nya whispered frantically.

"It's all right," I assured her. "That wound is real. So is-," I touched the newest scratch upon my cheek, "-this, apparently. I can definitely say that I've looked less bedraggled in the past."

"But I… I don't understand. Where _were_ you this whole time? I was looking for you for… for months! And now these… these bastards show up, try to kill me, they bring me your body, and… and now you're here. With me. Nothing makes… nothing makes any sense. I don't… I have no idea what's real anymore. Sam… what is going on?"

I took Nya's hands in an attempt to calm her, warming at the knowledge that she had been searching for me all this time - evidence that maybe she really _did_ care. "Slow down, honey. Slow down. I'm still trying to make sense of things myself. I only _did_ just wake up a few minutes ago. I've been away for months now in Eyzn's captivity - I can tell you more about that later - but it seems that an impromptu method of escaping from that man's clutches had been formulated without my knowledge. I suspect that we have Sagan to thank for that."

"Sagan?" Nya murmured as she looked over to where the geth was finishing up applying his yellow armor to his synthetic frame. Once the final shoulder pad was slotted in place upon the geth, Sagan stretched out his arms and tested his joints in case there had been anything improperly installed which would limit his range of movement. Detecting that it would be prudent to let Nya and I continue our conversation in private, Sagan proceeded to give us a very subtle nod of acknowledgement before he left to look over our newest prisoner in the other room, with the organics watching his departure, quite nonplussed.

"Yeah," I said with a little bit of admiration. "Sagan helped. Not completely on his own accord, as I've come to recently find out, but there will be a time to fully explain all of this to you."

"Why not now?" Nya asked, her eyes pleading for an explanation.

"You're still very ill," I explained to her matter-of-factly. "You need to rest and regain your strength. I can't be wasting your time by regaling you with long winded tales."

That, of course, was not going to fly with Nya and she kept on staring at me stubbornly, waiting for me to crack and to give her a shred of context. Eventually I relented somewhat with a sigh, but only because I could not bear to have her give me those wounded-puppy eyes at me. I still had yet to shore up an admirable defense against her yearning, unmasked look.

"I'd been incarcerated in a warehouse under Eyzn's purview for the past few months. Somehow, I don't know exactly how - you'll have to ask him - Sagan managed to find me, steal an enviro-suit from some poor sap who's probably long dead by now, and infiltrated the compound to free me."

"But how did you appear to be dead? You…" Nya's bottom lip trembled before she got herself under control. "You really did look dead."

"I guess Sagan worked out that the place I was imprisoned in was too well guarded for me to escape conventionally. It turned out that if everyone thought that I was already dead, they would lower their guard against the supposedly impossible happening and they would therefore be lax with the handling of my body. To do that, Sagan, disguised, found me on the day of my escape and injected me with some combination of chemicals - blockers, most likely - intended to lower my heart rate into a state of hibernation. That would put my heart into an extremely low rate of circulation, nearly impossible to detect at first glance."

I indicated a spot on my neck where I had felt the needle prick me, flooding me with the requisite serum that had saved my life. A thin trickle of blood still clung to my skin near the pinprick, proof that the last few hours had not been the result of a pipe dream.

"Apparently, this was not some ordinary compound that would start to react all by itself. No, this particular blocker serum was designed to reside in my heart and only become activated from a severe physical impact after a set amount of time had progressed. To make a long story short, I kind of initiated a brawl in the warehouse in an actual attempt to escape and I fell into my coma when I had been shot in the stomach. The fierce impact from the bullet combined with the amount of time had elapsed was enough to act as the catalyst for the blockers to go to work. They flooded my arteries and valves, simulating a cardiac arrest, which caused me to lose consciousness almost immediately. I think that I had been shouting a lot beforehand during my escape, which had the side effect of causing my throat to start bleeding. Fortuitous of that, because to everyone it looked like I had been vomiting blood, thereby helping to sell the effect of me being 'dead.' Things were… kind of a blur after that, so I really want you to know that I'm sorry for having put you through the ringer like that back there. It must have been quite intense for you."

"That's putting it mildly," Nya pouted, adopting a disappointed look but she quickly softened as just a tiny glimmer of her impish personality was allowed to come to light. "I think I would have appreciated it if you had been revived just a few minutes earlier."

"Yeah," I grinned sheepishly as I rubbed the back of my head. "You can chew out Sagan for his timing with the antidote to relax my circulatory system. I had no control over getting out of my hibernation."

Nya then glanced around the shambles of our bedroom, softly chuckling to herself. "You always did have a flair for making a dramatic entrance, though."

"Couldn't help it," I shrugged modestly, even though I was biting my lip at how much damage I had caused in my brawl with Vahl. "I tend to get a little defensive when someone tries to kill the people I care about."

The confession blurted from my mouth before I had any idea of what I was saying. Embarrassed and horrified, I clamped my jaw shut, unsure if I had been moving too fast for Nya's preference. Despite all of the progress the two of us had been making in the last five minutes, I should not have been so naive to relax into the intuition that our relationship could be salvaged based on those five minutes alone. Damn it all, I needed to temper myself and be ready for the inevitable disappointment otherwise I would be subjecting myself to heartbreak once again.

Also, I still needed to understand why she was acting this way even though she had given me up to Eyzn.

Yet Nya did not seem to be fazed at all. I was still attributing her lackadaisical attitude from her exhaustion at the hands of the neurotoxin. She was resting, not fully thinking straight. No reason to think that her behavior right now was indicative of her true feelings towards me. That would just be wishful thinking on my part.

However, it became really hard for me to stick to that mindset because Nya, still holding onto one of my hands, gingerly brought my hand closer to her and she pressed her dry lips upon the back of it in a soft kiss.

Instantly, I froze up, completely caught off guard at this development. All functions in my brain stopped altogether as I tried to comprehend what had just happened - _why_ this had just happened. Was this deliberate on Nya's part or was this still a result of her condition addling her mind?

Incredibly, it seemed that Nya was entirely cognizant of her actions because she still grasped my hand gently, her six fingers caressing the skin in a light massage as she beamed a tired smile, her breaths becoming longer in relief.

"Sam," Nya whispered. "I'm so happy you're alive."

A new development, indeed.

It was hard to utter words through the dry mouth that had abruptly sprung up upon me, but before I could stammer out an appreciative sentence, Nya began to pant and whine, sweat now beading up on her forehead as her body started to undulate. Alarmed, I pressed a hand to Nya's face, finding it that it was growing rather hot - too hot.

"Nya? What's wrong?" I asked her, trying to get a handle on all the things that were ailing her at the moment.

Nya squirmed, biting her lip. "It's… it's getting hot, Sam. I'm burning up."

"Your body is probably having a reaction to the inert strain of neurotoxin still in your system," I said. "I think that your immune system just doesn't like having anything foreign introduced to it. Nothing we can do but wait it out, you'll be fine in a few hours. The IV will keep you hydrated and I can give you some medicine to take the pain away."

"It's too warm," Nya still whimpered, her nostrils flaring. "I… I need your help."

"What do you need, Nya?"

"I need to get out of this suit."

Ordinarily I probably would have refused such a request, noting that the burning sensation Nya was going through was one of the symptoms of her immune system overcompensating to snuff out the virile invaders. Becoming cooler by taking off her suit was not a good idea in most circumstances, but things were a bit different this time. Her visor was already removed, meaning that it would make no difference at this point whether her reaction got any worse, because she was already exposed to the maximum amount of contaminants at this point in time. Even though the enviro-suit was capable at regulating body temperatures, it was woefully inefficient at dispersing heat - a lot of quarians stationed on humid planets regularly suffered from heat stroke as proof of this complication.

Sensing my hesitation, Nya's hands grasped at me more firmly. "Help me out of this thing," she begged.

Sighing, knowing that there was nothing that I could say to convince her otherwise, I wordlessly nodded.

Together, the two of us set about the task of carefully removing each section of Nya's suit. I delicately unlatched Nya's hood from where it remained taut over her helmet and respectfully folded the worn fabric and set it upon the nightstand. I then helped depress a series of heavy latches on Nya's helmet and the contraption eventually clicked free for me to remove it off of her head, allowing Nya's short, black hair to messily spill forth.

I tried not to stare too much at her, even though she was intensely studying me. Our hands moved independently, working to unseal and unclasp all the necessary impediments that were in our way from lifting away Nya's suit. Hidden flaps underneath Nya's decorative fabrics and the material of the suit itself revealed more catches for me to depress. There was a tiny hiss of air and suddenly the suit sagged a bit, having become looser around Nya's frame. I was now able to snap portions of the suit away from Nya's back, moving down her spine and beginning to expose the soft skin of her back.

While I was doing that, Nya had extricated her feet from her boots - they were not connected to the actual suit - and had shrugged her arms out from her suit so that her upper torso was now freed. Nya lifted her hips a bit so that we could shove the suit further and further down her body, working it down her chest and over her hips so that finally, Nya could squirm and kick the suit off as it was eventually wrenched down to her legs, liberating her from her eternal covering.

She was wearing nothing underneath the suit, but that tidbit was completely unimportant to me. Carefully, I helped Nya get underneath the heavy covers of the bed after considerately putting her empty suit aside. Before she was all tucked in, before the covers had been thrown over her, I did take note of the thin, vertical scar that still clung to Nya's skin, just below her sternum. It never failed to give me pause every time I laid my eyes on it.

We both carried physical reminders of how we had relied on each other over the years. How unfortunate, considering our stakes.

Nya murmured sleepily as she was handily set in a comfortable position within the bed. The soft sheets, tucked up to her chin, must have felt like the softest cloud against her bare skin and the heavy comforter would keep her warm in case she started devolving into chills. She cracked upon an eyelid briefly and I expected her to say something to me but instead she yawned, finally overcome from the day's events. I patted her right hand, realizing how exhausted she must feel and that I would swing by once she was better rested.

And then her left hand swung over to briefly brush my own hand since it was still there.

Borne upon that hand, too dull to sparkle but it had a magnificent sheen of its own, was a gray metal band that encircled one of Nya's fingers, nearly blending into the shade of her skin thanks to the dim light. Titanium, smooth and flawless.

A wedding band that I had given her myself years ago.

All that we had gone through… and still she wore it.

Nya, drained, had dozed off by now which was lucky because she would not be able to see that I was trying to hold back my tears, my sobs becoming uncomfortably stifled in my throat. The shock that I was going through was incomparable to what had gone on in the past half hour. I had to get up from the bed and stumble into the bathroom to regain my composure, astonished by what I had just seen.

I know that I had been trying to manage my expectations in preparation for the worst outcome, but after seeing that Nya still wore our wedding ring, partner to the one I always had on my own hand, I had no idea what to do at this point. She could have taken that band off at any time, all those months we had been separated after our daughter had passed, so why didn't she? It had to have been obvious to her, even with it worn underneath her suit, and would have definitely served as a reminder of the person that she had chosen to devote her life to… not to mention the daughter that we had lost together. I really would have expected her to have done away with the ring a long time ago.

Yet I had seen it still adorning her finger, clear as day. No mistaking the intentions behind it, even if it confused me.

Maybe Nya really did still love me. Maybe, I don't know. But if she did, why did she sell me out? Nothing was adding up, nothing made any sort of sense whatsoever.

What the hell was going on in my screwed up life?

I grabbed at a towel to scour my face clean before I tiptoed out of the bathroom and past the bed where Nya was soundly sleeping. I edged past the door and turned around to see that, in the time that I had been spending alone with Nya, we had apparently gained some extra visitors.

I was not referring to Vahl, who was lying in a jumble next to the couch, or the second guard that she had brought with her (crumpled behind the kitchen counter, looking rather lifeless - probably the work of Sagan knocking him out), but I was indicating the fact that Rie and Chandler, both of whom were now sporting a litany of superficial wounds to their faces, and were standing across from Sagan in the foyer. They were hunched over, hacking their lungs out like they had raced a marathon or something. Not to mention that it looked like the both of them had just gotten into a head-on collision, which was just one more confusion to add onto this already confusing day.

Both Rie and Chandler turned white as ghosts when they saw me appear from Nya's bedroom, understandably so. They hesitantly edged towards me, fighting with timidness as they saw my face, trying to make sure that their eyes were not deceiving them. After all, I had been AWOL for a long time and without warning. It was only natural that they would be shocked to see me so abruptly, in Nya's apartment especially.

Judging from their incredulous expressions, Rie and Chandler looked like they had a million questions they wanted to fire at me, both of them just as befuddled as Nya was back there.

If only I was in the mood for answering them.

"Well, what the fuck took you guys so long?" I asked somewhat belligerently before I pitched forward and fainted in a heap on the floor of the living room.

* * *

 **A/N: If I take a glance at the outline that I have for this story and make a prediction, the next couple of chapters are probably going to be more on the lengthy side and therefore might take a little longer... unless I go on a caffeine rampage, but that's probably not advisable. Do bear in mind that I'm terrible at making predictions for how long chapters are going to be in word length, so anything can happen at this point.**

 **I really did enjoy reading people's reactions to the bombshell that had been placed at everyone's feet at the ending of the last chapter. You guys really know how to make me smile! Hopefully this starts to make up for all the dourness that has permeated this entire fic - it's still not going to be all sunshine and butterflies from here on out, but I hope that you enjoy this development all the same.**

 **I look forward to hearing from you! Thanks once again!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Sam Smashes Vahl: "The Power of Excalibur" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**

 **Injection/Nya's Pain: "She's Rigged" by Harry Gregson-Williams from the video game prologue _Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes_**


	17. Chapter 14: C3

The Citadel

"So does this mean that you guys are back together?" Rie asked excitedly.

I had been mid-way through a much-needed sip of water and the unexpectedness of Rie's question coupled with the unfortunate timing of it all caused me to nearly spit out my mouthful in shock, which made my cheeks bulge rather comically.

After a rather painful swallow thanks to a tortured throat, I had to pound my chest to clear my airway.

"I… uh… I don't think we're quite there yet," I answered with a sheepish grin, trying not to meet Rie's expectant gaze. "There's still a long way to go on that front."

Rie's face did fall a bit at that and her mouth opened slightly as if she wanted to pepper me with more questions but her jaw just hung agape for a few seconds as she seemed to realize that I did not want to talk about this subject just yet. There were still too many mental wounds that I needed to clot before I could confront this topic with an open mind.

My fainting spell after I had helped get Nya all settled into bed earlier today had been all too brief, considering the frantic rush I had just experienced. My best guess was that my body had finally crashed after I had subjected myself to a complete tidal wave of natural hormones and chemicals whilst embedding myself in two separate fights that had signified life or death not just for myself but for Nya as well. I was only out for about an hour but that hour was probably the best sort of rest that I had had in months, perhaps in nearly a year.

While I had been soundly conked out, Sagan had the sympathetic notion to set me onto a nearby couch so that I could at least sleep comfortably until I woke again. That left my newest guests, Rie and Chandler, a bit nonplussed at how rapidly things were progressing before their eyes. To be fair, they had not laid eyes on me in months so it can be imagined that they had been bursting at the seams to quiz me on my whereabouts at first glance. One can only guess at how surprised they were as they burst in my apartment at the tail end of what had been a series of stressful scenes, only to watch me faint in a heap right before their eyes - no longer absent from their lives. They must have shared some awed expletives between the two of them while I was dozing away upon the floor as they tried to figure out just what the hell was happening.

Apparently, Sagan had thoughtfully gone to the trouble of recapping my struggles to Rie and Chandler to get them up to speed, since Nya and I were all tuckered out, exhausted to the point where we had transitioned into REM sleep almost immediately. I had to thank the geth for that - this way I would only have to recount this story to Nya and not bore myself out by repeating it to more than one person.

Although I _still_ needed to figure when would be the best time to have a sit-down with Nya so that we could carry out a little heart-to-heart. Lord knows we had a lot to discuss.

However, it would be a bit before Nya was ready to have an obviously intense discussion with me. She was not at all mentally or physically fit to be ready for such a serious matter. Being poisoned tends to drain one's energy a bit. She needed time to recover before she could muster the strength to face the next challenger: me.

I wonder… what kind of opponent would I turn out to be for her? The benevolent, pushover type? Or the aggressive, demanding type?

What did the situation demand of me? What did I want to get out of such a conversation?

 _What did I want…?_

When I had awoken from my impromptu siesta, I had the urgent need to take a shower and to wash this oily feeling off. Nya was still sleeping so I had to tiptoe through our bedroom carefully. Humorously, I found that her sleeping position in the bed was arranged in quite an unflattering picture (but rather hilarious in hindsight) with her head thrown back on the pillow, mouth wide open, and a tiny string of drool running down the side of her mouth as she noisily snored. I had to stifle my laughs and hurry into the bathroom before I accidentally woke her up. The shower itself was sublime - it felt like an inch of dirt and grime accumulated from my stay in the Shed was slowly being washed off of me. Add in the piping hot steam completely soaking every one of my pores and I could have melted down the drain in a drenched heap. My various cuts stung as the water splashed against them - blood trickled to the ground in a watery, reddish runoff - but I kept my composure and applied dabs of medi-gel to the slashes that I considered to be most grievous, including the one that Vahl had recently inflicted upon my cheek (yet another scar to add to my collection).

Nya had fluttered awake by the time that I had finally exited the shower - redressed and feeling like a new man. As expected, she was still a little tired and worn out, not to mention a tad hungry. Before we tackled the subject of her hunger, there were a few things that we had to work out together. First and foremost, we had to get Nya some clothes. After all, Nya was not real keen on spending her time recovering nude, even if she was covered by a mountain of blankets, especially since there were guests in the house. Luckily, I had a quick resolution in mind for her, a direct result of my planning for every occasion.

A while back, before our big fight, I had purchased some casual clothes for Nya - human clothes (because no retailer in their right mind would ever think to sell actual clothes to a quarian, for obvious reasons) that were made from a lightweight and breathable material. After collecting them from the dresser, I had then passed over to Nya a stretchy tank-top and some rather low cut shorts that could probably be considered as tennis shorts. I had turned my back while Nya had clumsily shimmied herself into the clothes while she was still lying in bed (a difficult feat, even for a healthy individual). They did not fit her alien form perfectly, but the clothes would give herself some modesty seeing as she was not keen to fit back into her suit so soon. I could definitely understand the desire not to become trapped into that skintight covering - Nya was going to milk this opportunity for as long as possible, but that would present additional problems to be overcome for all of us.

Nya's health as a byproduct of her terrible immune system was definitely a source of worry for me. Almost immediately after waking up, I made an informal decree to everyone that, if we were going to be in the same room as Nya, we were going to have to wear breathing masks, including me (despite the fact that Nya was mostly accumulated to my germs by now). For privacy reasons, despite understanding her reasoning I kind of wanted for Nya to get back into her enviro-suit as quickly as possible, or at least until she felt well enough to do so. However, she was being her usual stubborn self due to her lifetime of loathing the very thing that had kept her alive her whole life, so we had ended up on a compromise. Nya would wear an oxygen mask that would cover her nose and mouth - a constant source of fresh, filtered air - and I would not pressure her any more in regards to her compromised immune system. She readily agreed to this deal.

After setting Nya up on a medication plan, thanks to an application of soft-painkillers and immuno-boosters through the IV, I then focused on Nya's hunger problem. I actually had to run out to a nearby food stand to grab some grub, knowing that Nya would prefer to have some real food to chew since she now had the ability to by having no visor in the way. She would have to slurp her food through a straw if she did still have her suit on. Sterilized food paste sucks, so I figured that Nya would appreciate something a little more flavorful.

There was a dextro stand near our apartment that sold a variety of fast food high in calories. I grabbed a bagful of what appeared to be breaded balls of ground meat as well as a box of deep-fried batter that looked like a tantalizing dessert. The kitchen in the apartment had its own food sterilizer installed, so I made liberal use of it in preparing Nya's meal for consumption.

Nya perked up immediately upon her first whiff of the food's warm scent, much like a cat would upon the first sign of catnip. Her stomach rumbling with the need to satisfy its urge, Nya tore into her food with gusto, swallowing the breaded meat spheres so quickly that I had to tell her to slow down or else she would choke thanks to her exuberance. It looked like she was really savoring the meal that I had brought her - it was rare that Nya got actual food to chew on because she was cautious with removing her helmet to eat, even in her own home. Food paste was the only thing that she could consume without worry, but it was always a much blander affair than an honest-to-god home-cooked meal.

I did a double-take when I saw that there were tears in her eyes as she struggled to eat her food without scarfing it down. It must have been delicious. Hell, if the stuff weren't dextro, I would have asked if I could have sampled some for its smell was starting to make _me_ hungry.

I watched her eat for the next few minutes, just to make sure that everything was all right on her end. Soon, Nya was munching happily on the crunchy batter sticks that I had also brought for her, her spirits noticeably lifted now that she had a fulfilling meal in her belly. Nothing like a good morale booster than having been offered some tasty food.

Remembering her manners, she bashfully thanked me for the meal, which I shrugged off almost breezily. Call it my inability to turn from my Hippocratic oath - I was just trying to make Nya healthy again, which should be reason enough for anyone. Despite the tumultuous turns that our lives had taken during our separation, I would like to believe that there was still some semblance of an emotional connection between us that demanded me to act for the betterment of my wife.

Even after all she had said and done to me, I hated to see my wife hurt.

In an unpredictable twist from Nya's end, she had told me, after she had gotten dressed and all that, that she wanted to see Rie and Chandler, knowing they were just outside, to let them know that she was all right. Of course I initially balked at this, finding a twinge of jealousy that other people would get to look upon Nya's partially unobstructed face, but that quickly evaporated into concern - did Nya truly understand the implications of such a request? She would be giving up a huge amount of privacy that had been previously afforded to her, not to mention that the room would not be 100% clean for her.

Nya's exact words to me had been: "I don't care. They're my friends. They deserve to see me after I've been hiding behind a mask so long."

Her mature outlook on the subject was sobering, which reassured me as I invited Rie and Chandler in for a bit (but not before triple-checking that their breathing masks were sealed properly over their faces). The conversation between them was brief, but emotional. You could tell that Rie and Chandler were caught off guard with seeing Nya's partially unmasked face before them. All they really had was a good look at her eyes and her hair, but it would be enough to paint a clear picture for the both of them. All in all, relief was shared between the trio, not to mention some nervousness due to the fact that our friends had never seen a quarian out of their suit before. It would probably be a pivotal moment in their lives, come to think of it. Most people in the galaxy would never be able to look upon a quarian in such a fashion.

At one point, Nya realized that Rie had been staring at her for a bit and had asked her if something was the matter.

"N-No!" Rie stammered nervously but was unable to tear her eyes from her friend. "Not at all! It's just that… you're really pretty, Nya."

I think everyone in the room had to look away at that, suffering from secondhand embarrassment from Rie's blurted statement. Nya, though, took the compliment in stride and good grace with a bashful _aw-shucks_ look.

"Thank you, Rie," Nya murmured out, her soft voice just barely carrying past her lips.

I don't know if Rie or Chandler were cognizant of the fact, but I was certain that Rie's comment, however spontaneous it might have been, had confirmed in Nya's mind that she would never have to be fearful of her appearance to anyone ever again.

We all had then let Nya rest after that, seeing as she was still a little drowsy from her ordeal (the drug cocktail that I had put her on was probably contributing to her lethargy as well). The three of us then congregated out in the living room, which was when Rie had hit me with that bombshell question about Nya and I getting back together.

Needless to say, that was a topic that I had been dearly trying to avoid for as long as I could.

Rie had been disappointed in my evasive answer, but before she could come up with a new question to ask me regarding my up-in-the-air relationship status, Sagan quickly strode through the foyer door in his usual confident pace.

"Samuel," the geth greeted.

"Sagan," I replied as I clasped a hand to my ribs - a bruise that I had earned there was giving me some problems.

"We have prepared your requests as per your specifications," the geth spoke to me. "Monitoring protocols have been implemented against risk of abdication. You may proceed now, if you wish."

Rie and Chandler shared a look, obviously confused. "Woah, what do you mean by that, Sagan?" Chandler questioned the geth.

I shot a look towards Sagan that screamed _do not answer that_.

"Just… chores," I hesitantly replied in Sagan's stead (and not very convincingly) as I threw a jacket about me. "I've got a laundry list of things to do now that I'm back. I shouldn't be gone longer than an hour or two."

"You… want us to come with?" Rie beckoned.

I shook my head. You better believe that I was shaking my head emphatically. "This'll be better if Sagan and I handle this by ourselves. Just relax, you two, and make sure that Nya stays comfortable. If she asks where I am, tell her that I'll be back soon."

I'm sure that Chandler and Rie were probably getting fed up by now with my sudden appearances and disappearances, but even I had no control as to where my duties lay. I had a job to do, people to protect, and a life to rebuild piece by piece.

Might as well start as soon as I could.

* * *

It took a five minute shuttle ride to reach the destination that Sagan had previously indicated to me, which was some empty office building that just skirted the edges of the factory district upon the Citadel. Rooms for rent. No one to disturb us here. Sagan had chosen carefully with regards to decreasing our chances of being disturbed.

Trust me, we needed all the privacy that could be afforded to us right now.

After progressing through the empty lobby and down a few dozen meters through a thinly carpeted hallway, Sagan held open a door that was not at all labelled, a completely camouflaged barrier enveloping worrisome intentions.

The tiny, windowless room lacked any furniture at all except for a gurney. There weren't even any windows here for excess light to stream through. Strapped at a 45 degree angle to that gurney was Vahl. Her eyes slowly blinked open as she began to perceive that she was no longer alone in the room, the rising motion of her chest increasing in tune to her inherent fear. Well, it was probably not exactly correct that she had been alone the whole time - the motionless body of the second guard that had accompanied her moving my "corpse" around was lying in the corner behind her, just out of sight. The guard was already dead, though. Sagan had broken his neck in what had been a quick and relatively minor scuffle before reviving me. A sad and wasteful use of the quarian youth in this day and age.

"I… I won't tell you anything," Vahl moaned out as Sagan and I approached her bound form.

I let her statement stew for a bit as I just stood by, keeping a disinterested expression on my face. Vahl only became more confused and more scared as the silence continued to grow in intensity. That was good. I wanted this bitch to finally discern me as a danger and not as a pushover.

"You've got bigger things to worry about than not talking," I finally said as I began to pace around the gurney, keeping my hands clasped behind my back. "Finding it difficult to move, Vahl? Can't even wiggle a finger, can you?"

The resulting grunts and the jerking of Vahl's head as she struggled to even move a singular muscle strand told me everything I needed to know. The restraints were not too tight as to restrict blood flow. On the contrary, they encircled her limbs rather loosely.

"You have a fracture in your C3 vertebrae, Vahl," I whispered in her ear, causing her to tremble. "You're paralyzed from the neck down. You're crippled now that your spine is broken. A quadriplegic. You hear me? You're one of the _infirm_ now. If you weren't already in that suit of yours, you'd be wearing diapers for the rest of your life."

"No…" Vahl whispered in denial. "N-No…"

"Yes, I'm afraid," I adopted a fake sage tone. "You see, I'm not all that concerned if you talk or not, because I don't think you'll be walking out of here anytime soon. Not with such a spinal injury. I mean, these injuries _can_ be fixed but, forgive me if I'm being ignorant, I don't think you can cough up the cash for such an operation, much less have such an injury listed on your healthcare coverage… which I'm willing to bet that you don't even have."

Vahl was sniffling now, a pathetic mess of a quarian struggling to come to terms that she was permanently disabled for the rest of her life.

Still, she persisted.

"You will get… nothing from me," she panted, trying desperately hard not to cry. "You won't find out anything about Eyzn, I swear."

I tilted my head in apprehension. "Now who said I wanted information on Eyzn?"

Vahl's eyes met mine in shock, uncomprehending what she had just said.

Yet I broke out into a wide grin. "Only messing with you. _Of course_ I would like information on Eyzn. I mean, what else would I be looking for? All I want to do is remove his organs from his body with my bare hands. You know, simple stuff. I really would especially like to know where he is now at this point in time. Is he still in Los Angeles? Does he have a secondary site?"

Vahl just looked to the side, her eyes beginning to water in defiance. Brave of her, but her bravado was vastly limited. Eyzn had shown me how to pry the answers out of those who didn't talk.

I simply shrugged before I reached into my jacket and pulled out the pistol that I had holstered at my side. I did a quick check to see if I had a fully primed thermal clip in the housing before I lifted the weapon threateningly and pressed the barrel against the side of Vahl's helmet, creating a tiny scraping sound as smooth plastic rubbed against worn metal.

"So _now_ you still have nothing to say?" I murmured. "Not even when being threatened with your life? How interesting. I seem to recall you saying to me that killing you would be akin to signing my death warrant, considering Eyzn's… interest in you. If that truly is the case, it seems like your death would be just the catalyst I need to make Eyzn come to _me_. Still you remain silent, complacent even. Maybe you realize that, because you helped Eyzn torture me for months on end, I'll not find it within myself to be merciful."

I now moved the gun underneath Vahl's chin, forcing her eyes to peer back into mine.

"I wonder, will _you_ beg for mercy when the time comes? I crippled you, therefore you know that I can end you."

Fortunately, since Vahl had a very limited line of sight, she was unable to notice that my finger was not anywhere near the trigger of the pistol and was instead resting on the side of the barrel, practicing the trigger discipline that I had learned years and years ago when I first handled a gun. The effect of placing the weapon in such a threatening position was starting to take effect on Vahl, who was struggling to appear calm, but the quick and erratic darting of her eyes told me otherwise. She would have been a harder prisoner to crack ordinarily but it seems like the shock of being paralyzed had thrown off her mental fortifications. There were still barriers that I needed to crack, but it was like she was barely being held together with tape.

I just needed to apply pressure to the right area.

Just at the moment before it seemed like Vahl was about to break down in fear, still clinging to the desire to live, I lifted the pistol away and slid it gently back into the holster at my side. The nasty smile that crept across my lips could not be helped. As cruel as it might sound, after having been subjected to this woman's abuse time after time, I was glad to have finally turned the tables against her.

"But I don't need to go that far with you," I said in a breezy manner. "Actually, you don't need to say a word at all. The entire time we've been talking, I've distracted you to the fact that Sagan's been cloning your omni-tool down to the last line of code. Which reminds me, how far along are you with that, Sagan?"

"Wh-Wh-Wh-... Huh?" Vahl stammered, unwilling to believe what she had just heard.

"Data transfer nearing completion," Sagan reported from behind the strapped quarian, his omni-tool glowing brightly around his forearm. "Forty-four seconds remaining at 96% progress."

I clapped my hands once, my eyes never leaving Vahl's stunned expression. "Fantastic. You know, Vahl, because your back got all kinds of fucked up, your cortical implants had a bunch of the physical connectors damaged, at least the ones tangled up in your spinal column. Apparently a bunch of your firewalls were deactivated as a result, which made it a cakewalk for Sagan here to simply walk on in, if you'll take the expression, and download whatever he wanted. Messages, contacts, even any explicit videos you might have bookmarked on the extranet, we can see them all now. The interesting part is, because we can now spoof your identity, we can call anyone we want and people will think that it's _you_."

"You bastard," Vahl whimpered, but of course she could not do a thing about it. Words were all she had to defend herself.

"I've been called worse things by better people," I simply retorted with a sly grin. I then craned my head to look at Sagan. "Look up Eyzn's omni-tool address. I think it's time we gave him a nasty shock, don't you?"

Sagan looked up from the progress bar tentatively. "Is that a wise move to make, Samuel? Would it not be prudent to delay the revelation of your survival for as long as possible? That way, such information might be useful to be deployed at a more critical time."

"I thought about that," I said as I gave a brief shake of my head. "But the cat's going to come out of the bag very soon regardless. Eyzn's going to get suspicious if Vahl doesn't report in - and look at the state she's in now! There's no way that she can give a progress report when she's completely disabled. That will either tip Eyzn off that something's terribly wrong and he might or might not come to the conclusion that I'm still alive and kicking, but I want to be the one to break the news to him before he spoils the surprise for himself."

To his credit, the geth did not as much as twitch. "As you wish," he said instead.

With a couple distinct taps that caused blipping noises to emanate from the omni-tool, within a few seconds a connection had been opened that honed in on Eyzn's own address, regardless of the fact that we had no idea where he physically was right now. In moments, the call connected without any trouble, and a figure draped in static, lit by an aquamarine light, stepped out of thin air, washing out all of the bright color upon their suit.

Eyzn had now joined the party.

The holographic representation of my enemy looked around the room for a bit to appraise where he was. He could not see me right now because I had stepped behind Vahl's gurney, obscuring me from his view. This meant that Vahl was the only person that Eyzn was able to see right now, unaware that all of his meticulous plans were about to disintegrate right before his eyes.

" _You took longer than expected_ ," Eyzn said to Vahl, surprisingly not noticing the fact that she was strapped down as a prisoner. " _Is this" -cough, cough- "sorry business with Nya finally finished?_ "

Vahl, eyes wide with panic, tried to utter a warning, but she was too freaked out at what was to come that the only sound she made was air rushing through a dry throat.

Eyzn, rightfully so, was confused at this development. " _Well? Speak up, woman! It's not like you to be so stilted. It couldn't have been that traumatizing for you, could it?_ "

"You might be surprised," I finally growled as I stepped out from where Vahl was positioned, an infuriated look upon me. "She ran into more trouble than she had expected."

An unfortunate aspect of projecting Eyzn's holographic appearance into this room was that it was even harder than usual to be able to discern his expression. The visible jolt his body gave, however, told me all it needed to regarding his complete and utter surprise. The man made a strangled noise, his lips fumbling over themselves as he tried to comprehend the likelihood of this happening to him - to see me alive and well, now understanding that I had Vahl in _my_ clutches this time.

I shot him a toothy smile. This was a good start to my payback.

"Lost for words, are you?" I snarled. "Or are you unwilling to believe that you made yet another colossal screw-up?"

" _There… is… no… way…_ " Eyzn mustered out, having to force each word through a thickly closed throat. " _It… it cannot be. You were dead on the floor! You couldn't have survived!_ "

"It's funny how I've been getting that very same reaction from people these days," I quipped, walking up to within a foot of Eyzn's hologram. "Not what you expected, is it?"

Eyzn raised a hand to suppress a horrid cough, his body bending over slightly as he exhaled explosively. Minute trembles seemed to rush through him like lightning bolts and he had a slight rasp to his voice as he straightened.

" _How did you come back?_ "

"You have your secrets," I levelled a finger at Eyzn, "and I have mine. You still haven't completely figured me out yet, despite the fact that you tried so hard to."

" _Be that as it may_ ," Eyzn shuddered as he shuffled his form around me, " _your comprehension regarding me is not yet complete either."_

"Yeah, shut up and listen for one moment!" I snapped as I slowly walked backward to where Vahl lay on her stretcher. "I'm not the one who's been going around kicking the hornet's nest here. Despite all the suffering and torture that I've had to endure at your hands, you made the mistake of letting me slip through your fingers. You didn't kill me. You didn't kill Nya. But I'm now going to kill you and everyone you care about. Starting with this one right here."

Hotly, I grabbed the edge of the gurney and wheeled it closer so that Eyzn would be able to see just how terrified Vahl was. She let out a whimper right before I grabbed her helmet at the chin, keeping her head in place and yanking it upward so that she could look helplessly upon her ally.

"I'll make this simple for you," I grimaced through clenched teeth. "I don't want things to get ugly, but it's all up to you now. That's the difference between us, you know - I'm giving you the power to save this woman's life. You leave me and my family alone forever, you hear? You just skulk off to some far-away place, never to show your face again. Do that, and I'll set Vahl free. She'll never walk again, but she'll still be alive. You get a life in exchange for never interfering with my life. Hell, if that's not good enough for you, I'll settle for you divulging your location so that the two of us can finally settle this spat once and for all like a couple of men. I'll always want to kill you - you'll never get a better shot than this, pal. What do you say to that, huh?"

Eyzn quickly glanced at Vahl, appraising her own attitude that had gotten her embroiled into this situation. Helpless, the woman tried shaking her head back and forth, her eyes silently pleading for mercy.

"Eyzn…" Vahl whimpered. " _Please…_ "

Eyzn took no notice of Vahl's pitiable imploring and instead turned towards me, taking stock of the fact that I had my fingers placed precariously upon the clasps of Vahl's mask. I could not be clearer with my intent and Eyzn was smart enough not to think that I was stupid for even broaching such a heavy turn of events.

If one could only make sense of the sinister thoughts floating around in that maniacal head of his.

Eyzn's eyes slid towards me, a tic that I had come to associate with amusement. " _It seems that there's quite a deal on the table,_ " he announced with a worrying smugness. " _So… let… let me see if I have it straight, then. You're" -cough, cough- "proposing that you will release Vahl back over to me if I simply… stop pursuing what has been my natural inclination for years?_ "

"You _know_ what I'll do if you refuse," I whispered as my hand tightened around Vahl's head.

" _I'm well aware. But it's not so simple. I've been planning your suffering for months on end and now this… news that you, in fact, never died has made me more," -cough, cough- "enraged, at that. I had so many things that I wished to show you, Sam, and now that you're still alive, I may just have that opportunity sooner or later. I want you to hurt as much as possible and I'm willing to use every last trick that I have up my sleeve to break you once and for all, you pathetic worm. No, I don't think the tradeoff is worth it."_

"Ey-Eyzn?" Vahl moaned uncomprehendingly.

Eyzn just glanced at her coldly, a soft infuriation demonstrating his disdain at Vahl's failure. Maybe the both of them had this disposition that, to be captured by their sworn enemy, was a mark of shame that would be placed upon their heads forevermore. My throat tightened up once I knew how this was going to play out.

Managing to keep by breathing level, I slowly depressed my fingers upon the catches of Vahl's helmet, the clicks echoing loudly in the small room, but I did not pull the visor off just yet. Vahl made a horrified squeak, not at all sounding like the sadistic woman who had taken pleasure in tormenting me, realizing that certain death was upon her.

"You back off now or I pull this off her head," I softly warned the still-complacent Eyzn. "You'll never find her in time to save her. She'll perish of an infection in a matter of hours… unless you do what I tell you."

"' _I do what you tell me?'_ " Eyzn mocked shrilly. " _All I would be doing is merely showing you how weak I am - if I do what you tell me to. It looks like that Vahl will simply have to wind up as a casualty of our little conflict. Unfortunate, I quite liked her. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Sam. I think that you and I both know that you won't kill a helpless person in cold blood, even considering what she's done to you_."

"You want to bet on that?"

" _By all means,_ " Eyzn indicated with a chuckle. " _Prove me wrong. If you really have it in you_."

I stared determinedly at Eyzn, my own trembling having calmed to the point where it was no longer visible. Vahl was now making horrified noises, completely dumbstruck at how callously she had been discarded, to be used as a bargaining chip like she had been demoted to existing as a simple item. Eyzn wasn't going to budge and I knew it. My bluff had been called on this one - killing Vahl was not going to get me any closer to beating Eyzn to a pulp and he knew it. This sadism on my part… it was a line that I was still unwilling to cross. I shocked myself with how close I had gotten to stepping over that line, just to prove a point.

My fingers gradually stopped depressing the catches on Vahl's mask. There was a scraping of intricate metal parts and the visor slowly locked back into place, eliciting a grateful gasp from Vahl.

I then let my arm drop to my side, in full view of Eyzn's smug mask.

" _Just what I thought,_ " Eyzn prattled in his pompous tone. " _Still too much of a coward to make the hard decisions. You're still weak, Sam, and that will be your downfall sooner or later._ "

"What… what are you…" Vahl continued to plead, her perceived salvation slipping away from her every second. "E-Eyzn?"

Eyzn continued to ignore her, but he lifted a hand in her direction while still glaring at me. " _You can keep your spoils of war. She's of no use to me anymore. Still… I'm disappointed in you, Sam. I would have thought that you could be a bit more… imaginative with your negotiating skills. Apparently that is not the case._ "

I kept my trap shut, finding it difficult to say anything even as Eyzn turned to disconnect the call. But before he could do so, he took one final glance back at me.

" _I can at least give you a clue on how to proceed next. Since you've already hacked Vahl's omni-tool, I'd suggest looking in her main directory files. There, you'll find a copy of the conversation that I had with your wife, Sam. Take it. Show it to her. I know that you're the type that leaves no stone unturned. You're always searching for the truth - maybe now you'll have an attempt to dredge up the true feelings that have been surrounding your wife for the past year. I leave it entirely in your hands on how to proceed next. We'll be seeing each other soon enough._ "

To prove his point, Eyzn's hologram lifted his arm, detailing a floating projection of the horrific admission that had been of Nya spilling her guts to Eyzn in her moment of weakness. At the same time, a dot on the back of Vahl's omni-tool began to glow, a signal that the file Eyzn had been talking about truly did reside within her tool.

My eyes were drawn to the warm glow. Something was stirring within me. I wanted nothing more than to ignore Eyzn's obviously manipulative "advice," to basically tell him to fuck off and continue my own process of healing in my own direction, not to be influenced at all by him. But… that video was irreconcilable proof, the one thing detailing Nya's guilt to me, a piece of the puzzle that had not been available to me until now. Before I only had her words in my head to confront Nya with. Now I could play them back to her and see if she tried to spin it in any other direction besides the obvious.

Fucking hell. Eyzn had truly thrown me a curveball on this one. The brilliant stroke of this play was that he was right - however things were going to proceed, it really was all up to me.

Disregard the vid… and see if Nya lied so that we could potentially rebuild. But that would mean that our relationship from that point forward, if things all went according to play, would be built on a lie.

Conversely, I could show Nya the vid and see how things went from there. That option was the more volatile of the two and I had no way to predict what would happen if that was the one I chose to go with. It might end up for the better, but there was a huge chance that things would end very, very badly for us both. Perhaps the both of us might end up in a worse state than when our daughter died.

Eyzn had long disconnected the call by then, leaving me to muse over the double-edged sword of a choice that he had presented me before I decided to disregard mulling over it for much longer. I then turned to where Vahl was staring helplessly into the space that Eyzn had occupied, eyes watering, and whatever muscles in her neck that were still functioning were quivering. The woman had completely broken in the wake of Eyzn's betrayal - all her hope and loyalty to the man had been thoroughly shattered. Can't say that I was all that sorry for her. If you associate yourself with thieves and scum, you're only going to get the same sort of treatment in the end.

I watched Vahl stew in her misery for a minute or two, fascinated with her apparent surprise that she had been treated this way by Eyzn. The fool - she really did believe that Eyzn would have given her more loyalty. Now she truly realized that she meant nothing to the man.

Shaking my head, in some small move of pity, I reached over and hit the switch that lifted the restraints off of Vahl's limbs, the ones that had been strapping her to the gurney. The metallic cuffs rose with a hiss, leaving Vahl to roam free, but seeing as she was paralyzed good and proper, she would still not be able to move even an inch across the ground.

"You've been rewarded well," I said sarcastically to the previously bound woman. "Eyzn's never cared about anyone who wasn't direct family. Did you really think that he would drop everything for _you?_ "

"I…" Vahl attempted to speak, "I thought… he _would_ come for me."

"The truth sucks, doesn't it? He was always going to throw you away. At least you get to find out some semblance of what makes Eyzn tick before you go out. Makes for a tragic finale, wouldn't you think?"

Vahl still remained suspended in the place upon the stretcher that she had been in before. She mustered enough strength to make a miniscule shake of her head, one of denial and unbridled anger.

When she spoke next, it was oddly distant. "What happens now?"

"Now?" I did not lift my eyes to look at her while I zipped my jacket back up while Sagan was already moving toward the door without needing any commands from me. "Our time is up. I'm afraid that you don't have much longer left in this galaxy, Vahl. I'm not at all sympathetic to your plight - there was never going to be an option where you were just going to waltz on out of here."

"You… you can't," Vahl protested through wide eyes. "You can't just kill me like this! You… you couldn't even do it in front of Eyzn! If you're not going to kill me, are you just going to leave me here?"

"You misunderstand," I coldly replied as I straightened out my sleeves. "I'm not killing you outright because I don't need to. Your fate was sealed three hours ago."

Vahl still looked like she didn't understand, so I walked back over to her and gently grasped her right arm at the wrist. I then held the limb aloft so that she could see what I was referring to.

She cried out when the realization hit her.

Near her forearm, just below her elbow, there was a long, clean slash that had cut entirely through Vahl's enviro-suit. Her gray skin was easily perceivable behind the thick material - red blood wept from the wound itself, staining her arm all the way down. Vahl had failed to notice such an enormous breach due to her paralysis knocking out her sensation of touch in that area. She had not even known she was bleeding. A small puncture in an enviro-suit could be survivable, given that the right precautions were taken, but such a gash half a foot in length? Vahl had been breathing in gigantic amounts of contaminants that had rushed into such a large hole for a long time. Vahl's lifespan was now measured in a matter of hours.

"How…" Vahl trembled as a mess of thoughts tumbled through her head. "When did it…?"

"You must have gotten it during our fight," I said. "Back when you were swinging your knife about like a lunatic, trying to slice me open. You probably cut yourself just before the fight ended, which explains why you never even noticed. Now do you understand why I don't need to kill you myself? The hard part's already done. You're already dead, Vahl."

I took no pleasure in delivering this news to Vahl. Strangely, even when the woman seemed like she was on the verge of bawling, having been paralyzed and now being told that she was about to die, I still felt nothing towards her. I could not glean even a single iota of satisfaction knowing that she would soon be gone from my life.

After I let Vahl's arm uselessly drop back down to her side, she began imploring me with a frightful look.

"Please…" she uttered as she glanced down to the gun at my hip, a needful cry for help. "Finish me. Just don't… don't leave me here alone… don't let me suffer…"

I let her look at my pistol before I unemotionally put my jacket over it, obscuring the weapon from her view. "That's rich, coming from you," I snorted. "Unless you think I somehow forgot that I suffered at _your_ hands?"

"PLEASE!" she suddenly shouted, nearly taking me back a step. "I can't do it! I don't want to die like this!"

Regaining my composure, I slowly straightened out the collar of my jacket in response, the look in my eyes turning to ice.

"After what you did to my family? Personally, I think you're getting off easy. Enjoy the time you have left, Vahl. We'll never meet again."

Turning on my heel, ignoring her desperate screams, I finally strode away without breaking my hurried pace. Vahl screamed and screamed until her voice cracked and she went hoarse, rendered into uncontrollable sobs. I did not need to sit by and watch her die. I already knew the horrific fate in store for her.

If Vahl was lucky, the reaction would simply cause her throat to swell up, making her suffocate while blood vessels in her body inflated and burst, creating bruises. If she was unlucky, and her body reacted to the contaminants in a different fashion, her immune system might start attacking healthy blood cells and organs which would cause internal bleeding, or fluid could build up in her lungs and she could drown. Seizures and vomiting could occur, all in a messy combination that would, as with all the other possibilities, eventually kill her.

The last sounds that I heard from Vahl right before I left the room was her weeping as she faced her death with cowardice.

A fitting end for the treacherous woman.

* * *

The trip back to my apartment lasted in complete silence from beginning to end. Sagan was being his quiet self as usual, not prone to introspection. I, meanwhile, was harboring a litany of thoughts as grim portents rushed through my head.

Within my omni-tool was the video file that Eyzn had mentioned, copied directly from Vahl's own tool (and after Sagan had thoroughly scrubbed it with an intense virus scan). At the last moment, I had chosen to hold onto it. Like it or not, this video was actual proof of Nya's conspiring against me, something that I did not have at all before until now. Even though I still thought that Eyzn might have altered the footage to turn me against her, I knew that if I was going to find out the truth of this matter, I needed to confront Nya with it sooner or later.

No one likes wading into confrontations like this. There's no point in relishing such an event.

I found Rie and Chandler asleep on separate couches when I entered, Chandler snoring peacefully away. The sight was enough for me to make a smirk and a brief chuckle of amusement. Before I headed into the bedroom where Nya had been previously resting, I enabled Sagan with a long look of uncertainty. I don't know why I even bothered - the geth could not give me a facial expression back. Resigned to my fate, I took in a heavy sigh as I entered and closed the door behind me.

Nya, as it turned out, was awake but by no means energetic. She was still dressed in the human clothes that I had brought her, lying on her side while being covered by the thick bed sheets. It was easy to tell that she was awake because the glow of her eyes was impossible not to notice. In any case, as soon as I came into the room, she seemed to perk up, her face taking on this kind of ethereal glow. One would think that she had been anticipating my presence all this time.

"Hey," she murmured sleepily as she sat herself up. She tentatively peeled the oxygen mask off her face so that she could talk better. "How's everyone doing back out there?"

Not the first question I would have anticipated her asking, but we've rarely had level-headed conversations as of late.

"Tired, from the looks of it," I said as I pulled over a chair next to the bed. "Everyone's conked out on the sofas. Well, except for Sagan because… you know."

I reached over to grab my own breathing mask to protect Nya from my germs but she quickly intercepted my hand before I could grasp the tool, her smooth quarian skin gripping my roughened human flesh.

"You don't need it," she told me.

"You sure?"

"I'm fine, Sam. I at least want to see _your_ face now that we're like this."

It was pointless to press a case on Nya when she was in one of her forceful moods. That woman could be the most stubborn person in the galaxy when she decided to adhere firmly to her beliefs. Even so, the look on her face was soft, not at all lined with anger. She still looked pretty much the same as I remembered her, despite not seeing her unmasked in months.

Nya let go of my hand and rested her back along the bed's headboard, stuffing a pillow between her for comfort. "Rie said that you and Sagan went out for a bit. They figured out that you were… _talking_ to Vahl. How did that go?"

"About as well as could be expected," I said as I raised my hands and lowered them onto my knees. "Vahl's dead."

That struck Nya more than I figured, because she bit her lip and looked down at the comforters, a tad perturbed.

"Did… did you…?"

I shook my head, cutting her off. "No. Maybe not directly. It's hard to say. I would think that her death can be attributed to the actions I made while fighting her in this room, though. Slashing her suit open, breaking her back. They all led up to her being killed in the end."

Nya's hands visibly clenched on the blankets as she sat up a little straighter. "I… I didn't know you broke her _back_ , Sam. I thought that you… that you just knocked her senseless… or something like that."

Again, I gave a shake of my head. "Nope. Her back was definitely broken. She was paralyzed, you know. Permanently. Even if her enviro-suit had not torn, she would never have lived a normal life again. She probably would have begged to be euthanized before a year, would be my guess."

Nya did not respond right away and it was apparent to me that she, for some odd reason, was visibly saddened by the revelation that I had just given her. Now why was that? Was it because I admitted to practically murdering someone? Was it because of my callous and detached attitude towards the whole affair? What, then, could possibly be the reason for why she was upset?

And why, for all that is holy, was she upset _for_ me _at all_?

I decided to call her out on it, or at least allude to this shift. "You would rather she have lived, then?"

"No, it's not that," she said quickly. "It's more like… I just don't know what to feel. I can't imagine what _you_ must feel like, Sam, being that you are putting her death on your hands."

"You want to know how I really feel?" I arced an eyebrow. " _Nothing_ , Nya. I don't feel anything at all about it."

"But… maybe you should-,"

"Yeah, maybe I _should_ but I _don't_ ," I emphasized as I abruptly stood from the chair and began to pace around, too stressed out to sit in one place. "I don't care about the fact that Vahl is dead, or _will_ be dead in a couple hours. Allergic reactions don't claim someone straight away, you know. She isn't the first person that I've killed either, Nya. It just gets easier for me with each successive person. Easier and easier. Sad, I know, but it's the truth."

Nya's voice at this point was a deathly whisper. "I didn't… I didn't know that… that you've killed people _before_ , Sam."

"Does this ruin your image of me?" I taunted nastily as I turned to face her, my inner conscience wincing as I beheld the anguished look on Nya's face. "Never mind the fact that it was probably already ruined long before. Does it pain you to know that I'm not as 'clean' as I once was? That I can now kill a person and not feel any remorse for the act?"

"Stop, Sam," Nya begged as she shut her eyes. "Please… stop."

I then realized that I must have hit too close to home with that last sentence and I let some of my rage die down. I felt foolish, incredulous of my instinct to try and start a fight with Nya over this. Maybe I could not help it - nearly a year's worth of repressed feelings were bulging at the seams, eager to be voiced in an angry whirlwind now that Nya was back in the crosshairs.

Suddenly feeling hot, I shrugged off my jacket, leaving me just in a tank-top, the soft light of the nearby lamp now able to create a glow off of the skin of my arms. I set the jacket atop the back of the chair as I sat back down, trying to control my breathing.

Nya, on the other hand, was looking even more frightened as she was conscious enough to behold my look.

In the lowered light, the scars upon my skin stood out angrily as they threw shadows across the paths they ran. Roughened lines crisscrossed over my limbs in random scratches, unhealed marks that indicated the misery I had undergone. But perhaps the worst part, the coup-de-grace, was the large scar that made its way around the side of my neck, the one scar that Nya was hopelessly fixated upon right now. She was horrified at the savageness of the wound, as if she was able to imagine the anger that Eyzn had tried to impart with his knife as he had raked it across my neck. I kept my face neutral, my hands clenched together, and waited for Nya to utter a single word as her jaw noiselessly moved up and down as she was now feeling the phantom agony, sharing my hidden pain. Her fingers traced a similar line at her own neck and she finally met my eyes after a while.

"What _happened_ to you?" she sobbed, too distraught at my scars to remember if she should still be angry at me or not. "Where have you _been_ these past months?"

"With Eyzn," I replied simply while I twiddled my thumbs. "He caught up to me not long after we parted in Santa Cruz."

'Parted' was a generous term. I was not about to forget that Nya had been slapping me in the face repeatedly then while bawling her eyes out. She probably could not get that own image out of her head as well.

"Eyzn found me, knocked me out," I continued. "Shipped me off to a warehouse south in Los Angeles. He kept me there with all of the new blood for the little gang he was running. It was a prison there - he locked me up occasionally and tortured me too many times to count. My first night in, Eyzn decided to open up one of my arteries." I tapped the scar on my neck for emphasis. "He kept giving me medi-gel so that I wouldn't bleed out. He wanted to keep me alive for as long as possible - his intent was to gradually drive me insane through all of his little torments that he had devised. Some of them mental, most of them physical."

Nya's hand rose to her mouth. "Keelah," she whispered, unable to believe such horrors. "But you tried to escape?"

"' _Tried'_ being the key word. I didn't get very far. Got beat up a lot in the process, too. If it weren't for Sagan and… well, let's just say if I didn't get any outside help, I wouldn't be here talking to you now."

I now had a far-away look as I stared off into space momentarily. In the corner of my eye, I could see Nya fidgeting in place. Guilt on her part? Or was she silently lamenting the change that I had undergone in the interim?

"I killed people when I was trying to get out, Nya. I stabbed them, shot them, did everything I could just to survive. They… Eyzn's goons were killing others, fellow prisoners. I couldn't help myself. I had to hurt them back."

Now one of Nya's hands reached over to gently rest atop my clenched fists. "I'm so sorry, Sam," she whispered. "No one should have had to go through the trials that you did."

Oh, so _now_ she felt sorry for me?

"What made you change your stance on that?" I retorted, the question carrying a slight bite of acid.

Nya looked lost for a moment. "What do you mean by that?" she asked, honestly puzzled.

 _You know what I mean,_ was on the tip of my tongue. It was hard to believe, as smart as Nya was, that she would be dense to the event that I was alluding to. For the first time, I found that I could not read Nya as well as I would have thought. Was she repressing her role in my imprisonment? Was it because she was ashamed?

Or did she truly have no clue? It was doubtful that such a hypothesis was the case, but I had to cover all my bases.

Maybe it was finally time to lay out our cards on the table. No more hiding between us.

I took a breath. This was it.

Without another word, I slowly pried Nya's hand off of mine before I lifted my other arm to activate my omni-tool. Soundlessly, I scrolled through the various menus to find the file that I was searching for: the one Eyzn had so kindly provided me with. Nya watched me anxiously, seemingly having no idea as to what I was up to. Not wanting the silence to carry on for any longer than it should, I let the file play as I fixated my own gaze upon Nya's face.

" _You did well to alert me of this conversation that you were having with this man Chandler, but I still need more information because I still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle,_ " I heard Eyzn's voice burst forth, the recording playing in the middle of the dialogue, his words dimly echoing in our apartment. I did not need to look at the screen to be able to tell what was going on. I had the entire conversation memorized in my head.

Nya, upon first glance and as soon as Eyzn's familiar words hit her ears, paled. Her eyes widened in shock and she made a gulping noise as her mouth became agape. Her arms fell to her sides and she became so rapt with staring at the screen that she forgot to blink. Nya's eyes watered and her bottom lip began to tremble.

" _You promised that you would leave me alone!_ " the Nya on the screen cried out. " _You said that you would never bother me again if I gave you-_ "

" _-any pertinent information on Sam_ ," Eyzn finished for her.

Aghast, Nya moaned as she shot out her arms and desperately grasped at my wrists. "Stop this, _please_ ," she begged me, tears already beginning to fall. "Please, Sam!"

"You're not going to deny that this took place?" I asked, mildly surprised. I had to talk over the video, which was still playing, while Eyzn noisily rasped away.

A destitute Nya shook her head. "Please turn it off, Sam!"

"So you don't deny that nothing on the screen is a lie?"

" _It's the truth!_ " Nya howled as she clutched at my shirt. "The truth! _I swear!_ "

The video finally switched off at the same time that I stood back up from my chair in utter shock, leaving Nya crumpled in a heap upon the bed. There it was. It was finally out in the open. The admission of her involvement… and I did not even have to pry all that hard. It had been almost disgustingly easy.

"So…" I began, but it took a bit for me to think of the right words to say. I had been caught off guard from Nya's capitulation, even though I had known since the beginning what the final result was going to be. I guess the deepest cuts really do come from those closest to you. "You _did_ tell Eyzn where we were meeting."

" _Yes_ ," Nya sobbed as she pushed her head into the mattress in shame, her fingers scraping at the blankets.

" _You_ sold me out, just so that Eyzn would leave you alone."

" _Yes…_ "

"And you did it all for the vague promise that Eyzn, could somehow be able to give you your - _our_ \- daughter back? A process by which, bear in mind, violates nearly every biological law that we know of. He presented you with this fictitious idea and you bought it, hook, line, and sinker! Is that what really happened?!"

" _YES!_ " Nya screamed as she shot her head up, her face ruined with tears and snot.

At the same time, I stumbled backwards, stunned from Nya's emphatic grief, and fell heavily to the floor. The back of my head bounced against the nearby dresser and I winced as my vision went blurry for a second. With a trembling hand, I clasped the affected area, fighting to ward off the headache that was encroaching my way, becoming more focused on the quarian sitting atop the bed a few meters away.

Nya sat on her knees, shaking heavily while she watched me. Seeing me in pain must have awakened something in her because she had completely lost all of her anger. Instead there was sorrow, regret, and her own agony billowing around within her. With an unsteady hand, she pathetically tried to wipe away her tears, but more just flowed to replace the ones that had been scoured away and she finally quit in frustration, now on the verge of hyperventilation.

However, Nya momentarily screwed up her face in concentration and she gingerly crept off the bed and fell back onto her knees as she crawled over to where I sat.

"I beg you…" Nya whimpered, her entire body jittering all over the place in fear, "Sam… I beg you… I need your forgiveness. I know that I hurt you… that I was the cause of your suffering. I… please, Sam… I'm so sorry for what I did to you!"

Breathing hard as well, I just clasped a hand to my chest as an ache began to grow just behind my ribs.

"I hated you… Sam," Nya continued to moan. "B-But… that was n-never the truth. I… I only _thought_ I hated you but… I just wanted you to un-understand the pain you gave me. I swear… I swear on my life, Sam… I had no idea that Eyzn would hurt you so badly… that he would try to _kill_ you. When I thought that you were dead… I wanted to die too! You never meant for our daughter to die… I know that now… b-but _I_ didn't want to be the reason why you would have died. That was why… that was why I never said anything until now. You wanted t-things to come back t-to normal and… and now I do too! I want that too!"

I did not say a word as Nya kept pathetically crawling over to me, her face a miserable combination of heartbreak and terror. My own heart gave a stab - the invisible knife was wrenching me again - as I realized just how similar this moment was to the time when _I_ had been beseeching Nya for her forgiveness for my role in our daughter's death. The fact that our roles were now reversed, even though that I was now on the receiving end, upset me more than I could have realized. I was getting flashbacks to that night, each and every horrible second resonating upon my person. I also started to well with tears now and I looked away lest Nya get a glimpse of my misery.

Nya was still openly bawling, nearly in pieces as she poured out her soul right in front of me.

" _I was selfish!_ " she cried as she dragged herself to within a couple feet from where I was as she continued to wail. " _I just wanted my baby back!_ Oh, keelah! Sam… please look at me! I need you to see me! I'm… _I'm sorry!_ I… I just wanted our baby back!"

Never before, in all my life, had I encountered such a soul-shattering hammer blow all encapsulated in one person. It was incomprehensible, this tempest of ups and downs that had transpired in a matter of seconds. Had this madness finally run its course? Could I finally be allowed to break this cycle of violence?

Had I been the one holding everything back this whole time?

Yes, I realized. It was never Nya who had been responsible for this rift. It had always been my fault.

And it had all started when I had told Nya to blame me for killing our daughter. It had always been a lie, its foundations embedded onto shaky ground. I knew there would never be any proof for what happened, but the fiction that I had created in both of our heads quickly became our truth. It was the simplest solution, but it had been one made in haste. It had done more harm than good, even though I had lied for reasons that I had deemed to be right.

I was the one who destroyed our family.

But… could I be given a chance to make things right again?

Nya grabbed my hand once more and she waved my limp arm in the air frantically. She bunched my fingers up into a fist and pressed it against her warm cheek.

"Hit me," was her plea through wide eyes. "Hurt me. I'll al-always understand. Just… just hurt me if you want. You have… you have every right to be angry. Just… do… _something!_ Will you not speak to me? I can't live like this if you don't _talk_ to me, Sam! _What can I do to help you?!_ Sam… talk to me! _PLEASE!_ "

I'll admit, I had once entertained the thought of striking out at Nya. Just the mere idea of transferring all my frustration and rage into a singular blow and to watch it smash into her face…

The thought vanished before it ever had a chance to take hold, leaving me blinking foolishly as Nya, blinded with tears, awaited her punishment with a bowed head.

I gave a sniffle of my own as I too began crawling on my feet to close the gap between us. Nya tightly shut her eyes, fearful of what was going to occur next, already expecting the blow that would upend her entire world.

She would be in for the biggest surprise of the night thus far.

My fingers unfurled, relaxing the fist they had previously formed, and my open palm cupped her cheek while my thumb gently and soothingly caressed her skin. She was warm, so very warm, and I felt her hot tears create a stinging sensation wherever my fingers met wet flesh.

Nya's eyes snapped open.

Astonished from my compassionate touch, where before she had expected violence, Nya gave a hefty wobble as she fought to stay upright.

" _Nuh…_ " Nya mumbled as she was bewildered beyond belief. "I… uh…"

Her eyes drooped down abruptly and she began to tip forward as she became listless, but I was there to tenderly catch her. Her head pressed against my chest, leaving stains where her tears soaked into my shirt. Nya was shuddering against me, struggling to hold it together. I too was on the verge of a breakdown, but I managed to pull myself together, mostly for her sake.

As I continued to hold her close to me, Nya's arms slowly wrapped around my waist in a weak hug. The embrace warmed me in more ways than one, and I softly ruffled the back of her head in a reassuring manner, my fingers parting her short hair easily. For a while we just sat there, next to the bed, holding onto the other. I was her rock for her to cling upon as she calmed down. Nya then burrowed her face into my chest, still afraid to look me in the eye. With a knowing nod and my breathing alleviated by a newfound patience, I clutched her tightly as I pressed her against me like I was an enormous shield.

"I understand too," I whispered into her ear, causing her to make a grateful moan. "There's no one else who could understand more than I do."

"Sam," Nya mumbled into my chest before she turned her head a bit. "I…"

"Shh," I murmured. "You don't need to say any more. We've said enough, for now. It'll have to do. We've still a long way to go, together."

"Does… that mean…?"

I hugged Nya even tighter against me, afraid that if I let go, she would evaporate into thin air. The alien weakly hiccoughed in relief and I felt a flow of emotion rush out from me as I continued to hold her.

Behold my new normality.

"I'm not going anywhere," I told her as I rested my head atop hers.

* * *

The Shed

The doors to the security station slammed open as Eyzn barged his way through, clearly flustered. A wall of brightly lit screen blared into the quarian's face, throwing arcs of illumination around the darkened room. The chair facing the row of vidscreen banks rotated about to face the visitor, revealing Iroa sitting comfortably in the seat. Eyzn was not here to review the security situation in any case - Iroa was the one whom he wanted to speak with.

"You'll never guess who I just talked to," Eyzn breathed excitedly.

Iroa gave a shrug in a rather idle fashion.

" _Sam_ ," Eyzn pounded a fist onto the desk that separated them. "He's still alive."

Iroa did not act at all like Eyzn thought he would as the elder quarian barely moved a muscle in response to this news.

"Sam? Alive?" Iroa spoke slowly, almost in a lethargy. "How can that be?"

"I don't know! He managed to take Vahl as a hostage, too! She's lost to us, obviously, which is no big deal but I can't figure out how he managed to do it! Argh! That _bosh'tet!_ "

"You're not going to try and rescue your subordinate?" Iroa asked.

"Why the hell should I?" Eyzn answered like the question was immeasurably stupid. "It's her fault that she managed to be captured in the first place. I'm not going to waste time and resources trying to track her down - that's what Sam wants me to do. Besides, she looked heavily injured and she would just be a liability even if I were to mount some idiotic raid to get her back, which is never going to happen in the first place. Damn it all. He thinks I'm sentimental, the fool. Sam's had this clever trick up his sleeve for a while, would be my guess."

"Yes," Iroa mused. "Apparently he has, otherwise he wouldn't have escaped your clutches again."

Eyzn was in an agitated state and started walking back and forth from one side of the room to the other, his arms flailing about animatedly. "How?! _How, how, how?!_ How did he do it?! By the Ancestors, the bastard was _dead!_ We all saw what happened! He was bleeding from every hole in his body! I mean, if you hadn't shot him then, we would have-,"

Eyzn then cut himself off mid-sentence, an odd spark of imagination occurring upon him. Reaching out, he picked up a random datapad from the desk and began idly scrolling through it, his attention not at all focused on the object that he was holding.

"Something on your mind, Eyzn?" Iroa asked, but the little inflection on the end of the question implied that the answer was somehow redundant.

"Just curious," the young quarian responded distantly. "Just… a thought, Iroa. I would have thought that… after all that has been said and done, and from what I've shown you here, that you would have been… I don't know… just a little more respectful? Do you not think that such a reaction would be justified?"

Iroa shrugged as he steepled his fingers while reclining in the chair. "It has a certain logic to it, yes."

"So, correct me if I'm wrong, you've never seemed to be all that… awed when you arrived here on site. It's hard to tell, I'm not looking for positive feedback from you exactly, but I'm trying to determine if you really are as proud of me as you say."

"You've accomplished a great deal here," Iroa spread his arms. "That's more than anyone else can lay claim to."

Eyzn gave a slow blink and tilted his head slightly. "Yet you _still_ haven't said that you were proud of me."

"I guess that's true too."

Eyzn, still standing, continued to stare at his stepfather, who was placidly returning the look back expectantly. The younger quarian nudged himself forward a bit, a nonverbal cue for Iroa to continue to speak, yet the man remained maddeningly silent, keeping up that damnable look!

"Give me your pistol," Eyzn then hissed as he held his hand out, palm up.

Iroa did not seem fazed by this turn as well. "May I ask what for?" he asked.

"Just give it to me," his stepson growled.

With a shrug, Iroa lifted the gun from its holster at his side and flipped it in his hands so that he was offering the weapon to Eyzn grip-first. Eyzn roughly took the pistol and proceeded to not at all be gentle with handling it. With a grunt, Eyzn split the pistol down the middle, cracking the housing, and causing delicate metal parts to fly every which way with a light rattling sound like raindrops upon pavement. Iroa did not even voice a word of protest at the mistreatment of his weapon. Eyzn then took the half of the gun that ended at the barrel and slammed it heavily upon the desk several times, creating horrendous thuds that seemed to shake the room. In seconds the rest of the gun had been broken down the middle and Eyzn tipped the contents of the barrel into his hand and discarded the shattered remains of the weapon.

Almost delicately, Eyzn turned the nearly perfect cube over in his hands, the piece that he had torn from the pistol's housing. The cube was colored a light baby blue, and Eyzn's attention was firmly rapt upon it until he slowly looked up at Iroa and raised a hand with the cube perched between his fingers.

"Iroa," Eyzn spoke softly as he indicated the cube in his hand. "What is this?"

Iroa barely gave the object a lingering glance. "An ammunition block," he said. "Not sure why you believe that to be so important, seeing as every gun has one. Although, you _did_ just ruin mine which-,"

"A _blue_ ammo block," Eyzn emphasized carefully. "This is blue, Iroa."

"I'm not colorblind, Eyzn. I can see for myself that it's blue."

Eyzn's hands now shook as he forcefully gripped the block tighter. " _Blue_ , Iroa. Traditional ammo blocks are colored _red_. Red is the color code for lethal ammo. Blue is for _practice_ ammo." He rattled the block in a clenched fist. "Why was your pistol loaded with practice ammunition, Iroa? A person could get shot with one of these and it would barely penetrate a centimeter into their bo-,"

A sad realization came over Eyzn and with a sigh, he dejectedly tossed the block onto the desk, where it rolled to a stop in front of where Iroa sat.

"So…" Eyzn grimaced. "Even after all that had happened… losing your wife… fighting by my side on Rannoch… you chose to ally yourself with Sam in the end. What _changed_ , Iroa? What made you change your mind?"

Iroa now let out his first laugh of the day, a sort of understated rumble that still managed to slightly unnerve Eyzn as he watched his stepfather bask in his own amusement.

"A simpler question for you to ask me would be for me to name all the things that did _not_ change," Iroa smiled underneath his mask. "Eyzn, where did you get the idea that I would somehow be _proud_ of you kidnapping and enslaving a huge population of your people? Not only that, did you think I would have enjoyed the notion that you tortured and tormented a living person just because they humiliated us in the past? Eyzn… I've never done anything like that in my life! What you've become… keelah, all these tactics you've learned… none of them are from anything I've ever taught you."

"Blind just like Sam…" Eyzn shook his head. "You have truly lost your nerve, Iroa."

"No! On the contrary, I've still kept it! Even though you've hurt, killed, and tortured people, you still refuse to take responsibility for your actions! You blame your disposition on others, on Sam, on me, yet you can't seem to abide the fact that you've been travelling down this path all along!"

A dumbfounded Eyzn was silent for a moment before he regained his speech. "So you decided to betray me, then? Is this your way of teaching me a lesson?"

"Petulant boy!" Iroa snarled. "Nothing is as black and white as you make it out to be! It was never a matter of betrayal but simply the need to do what was right! You contacted me first with the declaration that you had Sam as a hostage, a man who has remained truer to his beliefs and to his family than you have ever been! I've always admired his convictions and his loyalty to my daughter and I knew… deep down I knew… that I could help him live a better life if I spirited him away from you."

"So you enlisted the help of a geth, killed one of my men, disguised the geth into my ranks, and faked his death all so that Sam could find the chance to get away, is that the way of it? Really, Iroa? A _geth?_ "

Iroa rapped his fingers upon the desk in annoyance. "That _geth_ deserves more credit for his work ethic than both you and I combined. It was _my_ idea to seek out the geth, actually, knowing his bond to my stepson - Sam - and together we came up with the plan to free him." Iroa now leaned back with his hands behind the chair as he smiled smugly beneath his visor. "I was worried for a second when you were examining Sam's body after I had shot him. You did all the right things to confirm the fact that Sam really was dead… except you did everything completely _wrong_." He lifted a finger and placed it on the side of his neck. "You checked for a pulse right on the _center_ of Sam's neck, remember? For starters, the arteries on humans are located on the _sides_ of their throat, not the middle. Also, you tried searching for a heartbeat on the _right_ side of his chest. Wrong again, a human's heart is slightly positioned to the _left_. You had all the opportunities to confirm if Sam was still alive, even though his pulse would have been very faint at the time, but you still messed them up in every way."

Eyzn roared as he smashed his fist through the datapad that had been lying on the desk, creating an electrical crackle. Iroa did not jump at the explosive burst of violence and was still chortling at his stepson's confused reaction.

"You've always thought of me as a failure," Eyzn panted as he turned his head towards the door.

"Being dramatic will get you nowhere," Iroa dismissed. "But it's true that I have never been as disappointed in you as I am now."

Iroa then quickly reached for an object at his side and Eyzn took that as a threat, his own hands speeding towards his own pistol that he kept holstered. However, Eyzn was too late on the draw and, in an instant, the security station was filled with choking smoke and phosphorous white light, searing burn images into Eyzn's retinas which caused him to stumble around drunkenly. Eyzn had to shut his eyes to drown out some of the pain as he now realized that a flashbang had just been detonated inches away from him. Even his self-polarizing visor had not darkened in time to allow his eyes to be damaged.

Half-blind, Eyzn groped his way around the desk and towards the chair at the security console… only to find that it was empty. Iroa was no longer in the chair. With a strangled curse, Eyzn whirled in all directions, trying to see which way his stepfather had headed. A useless gesture, the door leading out in the hallway was wide open, allowing a channel for the smoke to billow towards, beginning the process of cleansing the room.

Gunshots travelling down the hall could be made apparent as Eyzn's hearing gradually returned to normal. He wondered whose weapons they belonged to, but a twisting in his gut told him all he needed to know. By now the smoke had dissipated fully, confirming that Iroa had indeed fled the scene in the chaos of the moment. Eyzn was too exhausted to mount another chase and he simply stood in the center of the room, dumbstruck for the time being.

Even his moment of quietness did not last for long as a foot soldier suddenly burst in onto the scene, completely frazzled.

"Sir!" the trooper yelled in a panic. "It's Iroa! He just… started shooting! It's… it's completely-,"

"I know, I know," Eyzn sighed as he waved to the soldier to quiet him down, but the man still had more to say.

"N-No! It's the prisoners! Someone hit the gate release! They're all making a run for it!"

 _It cannot be,_ Eyzn thought as he whirled towards the monitors. Sure enough, despite his fears, all of the camera feeds that were positioned into the main holding blocks were all showing empty rooms with the doors completely wide open, leading directly out into the sprawling Los Angeles suburbs. Eyzn realized that when Iroa had detonated the flashbang, he must have sprung all the prisoners in the heat of the moment, no doubt planting a virus into the system to lock out anyone from accessing the system. By the time Eyzn could get the Shed back under control, he would have lost every single solitary person that he had under his purview.

Everything he had built… all had vanished in a span of mere seconds.

 _Iroa… Sam… Nya…_ Eyzn knew that they all needed to pay.

With a feral scream, Eyzn grabbed the back of the chair and hurled it at the wall of monitors, creating a ferocious blast of metal and glass as the entire wall seemed to shatter. Arcs of electricity briefly zapped out, creating a smell of ozone in the air. Sparks of hot metal dripped to the ground and a small fire began to blossom in one of the ruined vidscreens.

Surrounded by the carnage, Eyzn breathed heavily, his eyes slowly glazing over in determination.

* * *

 **A/N: Before any of you ask: No, this does not mean that things are fully patched up between Sam and Nya. Like they said, they've still got a ways to go before they're fully healed (...that is, IF they get to be fully healed).**

 **Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Also, please drop a review when you can! It really makes me so happy (even when the feedback is constructive criticism) to see a new comment in my inbox.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Vahl is Interrogated/Eyzn Sees Sam: "Disc Wars" by Daft Punk and Joseph Trapanese from the film _Tron: Legacy_**

 **Nya Admits: "That's Why We Believe" by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch from the film _Blade Runner 2049_**

 **Iroa's Revelation and Escape: "Insertion" by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe from the video game _Crysis 2_**


	18. Chapter 15: Alymphocytosis

I don't think I could have envisioned of a better sleep for myself, even if I tried my damnedest to do so. Sometimes reality can outdo the infinite potential of imagination, in that regard.

All things considered, I should have woken up from my rest all stiff and sore, probably with in an irritable temper to boot because I had spent the entire night curled up on the floor _next_ to the king-sized bed instead of in it, with only one side of my body rolled onto carpet – my only source of warmth. Despite all that, I felt no aches or pains impart themselves onto me as I stirred forth from sleep. In fact, I was completely energized, eager to look upon the coming days with fresh eyes.

Taking things off your conscience can surely do wonders for one's self-image.

What had happened between Nya and I last night could have easily spiraled towards disaster in so many ways. Perhaps it was for the better that I did not dwell too much on how badly everything could have transpired if the wrong thing had been said, or not said. The both of us could very well have decided to blow things up regarding the future of our relationship, yet despite what we might have done to each other in the past, it was curious that we still held onto this notion of preservation, to start to even out the roughened edges knowing that we had previously been at peace a long time ago. It was our love and respect for what we shared that enabled us to start this recovery process, to find within ourselves the ability to forgive.

Make no mistake, we were not fully healed, not by a long shot. But this was the best chance attainable for us in nearly a year. I would like to believe that we were going to seize this opportunity wholeheartedly. I for sure knew that I wasn't going to let Nya slip through my fingers again.

After taking a few minutes to allow myself to conform to awareness, I sat up upon the floor and did a few stretches to iron out all the kinks that I had accumulated while sleeping, drawing a yawn at the same time. As I was doing that, the sound of quiet breathing reached my ears, emitted from upon the bed. I perked my head up as I slowly rose to my feet.

Just as I had seen her last, Nya was still sleeping soundly in bed, her body wrapped up in blankets as she unknowingly cradled the comforter. There was this serene expression on her face, a kind of aspect that only transpires when someone's thoughts were completely clear. All the stress, all the yelling, and all the relief that had washed over her yesterday had taken its toll - she was completely entrenched in her rest, probably going through just as comfortable of a sleep as I had.

Quarians were lighter sleepers compared to humans. The fact that Nya had been resting for far longer than I had these past couple days was proof of her exhaustion. Ordinarily, Nya would be the one to awake before me, but it was apparent that her recovery was slowly taking its time as she fought off the effects of the neurotoxin that had been forcefully injected into her body. She was still too weak to even slip back into her enviro-suit - not like she particularly wanted to right now - and could barely stand up for a few minutes without collapsing from fatigue. The closest approximation that I could muster was that Nya would be back to her full strength within a week, which really was miraculous and a testament to the natural hardiness of quarians, but it meant that Nya was as vulnerable as an infant until then.

I studied her face with a yawing hunger as I pulled up a chair (the same chair that Vahl had broken her neck upon, I noted), taking advantage of this moment to soak in her true appearance. Nya had always been a striking woman. Even if her skin color - a basalt gray - had been one of the many different shades found upon humans, Nya would still have this unearthly quality about her that would separate her from the horde quite easily.

The shape of her head was slightly thinner than an average human's - small enough to fit into the tight helmet that quarians usually had over their heads. Her mouth, comparatively, was also small but proportioned perfectly to her face - gray lips that blended into the rest of her face, making it seem like there was no way to tell where they began. Tiny silver freckles, invisible unless appraised closely, formed a band that ran just underneath her eyes, a spotted trail that extended across the bridge of her nose. Nya's eyes were edged just a little close to the center of her face, with only the barest hint of crow's feet tugging at the corners of her eyelids. Her skin on her face was unblemished, the result of trapping it away from the elements for nearly her entire life, save for the thin scar that resulted in a slightly raised, whitish line that scraped along her cheek - a wound that I could now match, I realized as my own fingers touched the scar on my own cheek, the one that Vahl had gleefully given to me with her knife while I had been passed out.

Nya's hair was short, midnight black. It had to be short because having long hair while wearing a helmet would be host to a wide margin of issues stemming from comfort to convenience. The suit automatically trimmed her hair in set intervals, keeping it long enough to have her gender be apparent, but short enough so that it could not be tangled or tied up in a ponytail. Her hair, although wispy thin, had a tendency to clump up with other strands, causing her overall appearance to be a disheveled mess. I thought it was an endearing look. It added to the authenticity of her natural appearance - a sort of silent declaration that emphasized: "This is me. This is who I am."

She would always have my respect and adoration for her bravery in choosing me to be the first one to see her unmasked face.

After spending a few minutes watching Nya calmly sleep some more, I became a bit restless. After all, sitting in the same position for a bit is going to wear on you at some point (not to mention wreak havoc on the lower back). I let my gaze wander for a bit, after I had spent so much of my attention on Nya. I guess, now that I had this moment to relax, I could finally take stock of my surroundings to discover that our bedroom was pretty much exactly the same as how I had left it (when I had gotten kicked out, I mean). Disregarding the absolute wreckage in the wake of the brawl, nothing had been changed. The same abstract paintings still hung from the walls, our night desks were still adorned with our Swiss clocks, picture frames of the two of us still hung around the dressers, and even my stack of print books was arranged next to my spot on the bed in the exact order from where I had left off (techno-thrillers, the cheesy kind).

Now, I wondered, if Nya had really been hating me up until now, why had she not seen fit to erase all memory of me from this room? Laziness or conflicted feelings? I could ask, but I would probably get an evasive answer in return.

The visual accounting of my bedroom, despite offering some interesting insights, did not successfully provide me with much stimulation so, obviously, I needed to seek out more. That part was also not hard to find a solution to. Amazingly, the vidscreen in our room was one of the few items that had not been damaged while I had been fighting with Vahl, so my wandering mind saw this as the perfect distraction for me while I waited for Nya to wake. This way, I would have no shortage of things to watch, even if I had to resort to braving the reality television channels.

The glow from my omni-tool and the vidscreen, not to mention the volume from both, had been turned down to their lowest settings, so as not to disturb Nya. I fiddled about with the screen's menus for a bit before finding the settings to access the networks, in which I found out that I had set myself up for disappointment. Most of the stuff playing were either crap game shows or esoteric alien soap operas. Apparently quality television had gone the way of the dodo in 150 years. There was basically nothing of substance that I could find. So far things were not looking good in terms of finding something to watch.

In the end, I stopped trying to scan the channels for something to watch and instead began browsing through what was on the local memory. This was where all of our home movies were stored, filmed by either Nya or I at random moments, using an automated holo-drone to record our interactions. To my surprise, the OS was indicating to me that someone had been watching several of these clips recently - as recent as _last week,_ as a matter of fact. It would not say exactly who had been the one watching these vids, but even an idiot would not be hard pressed to figure out the answer to that question almost immediately.

So… what had Nya been watching, exactly? I flipped the indicator on the screen to the first video and made it play (after double-checking that the volume was turned down, of course).

The image winked onto the screen instantaneously. I had no idea what sort of video to expect straight out, probably because neither of us had taken the time to properly name each and every clip, so it was like I was watching this interaction from the first time with fresh eyes. The image on the screen was clear, unmarred by static, as it conveyed the interior of what I immediately pegged as my apartment - right in the kitchen, to be exact - as the camera floated above the shoulder of the only individual on the screen, showing that this person was currently hard at work making something on the stove, engrossed in their work.

Even I could recognize myself from the back, I noted as I became rapt with interest.

While I continued to watch myself slave away in the kitchen, another figure suddenly sidled into frame, the Sam on the screen seemingly not knowing that he had company. The camera briefly turned to reveal a happy looking person, their skin the color of clouds - provoking an intrigued reaction in me as I watched. On the screen, Nya, unmasked, had this devilish grin on her face as she quietly crept up to me while I was busy cooking. The drone was apparently wise enough (or had been programmed) to pan its virtual lens slightly upward because I realized that Nya was probably not wearing any clothes, judging from the fact that all I could see on the screen was her bare back - safe to say that if she wasn't wearing a shirt, she wasn't wearing anything else.

I leaned forward, unable to hide my smile as I watched Nya tiptoe forward on the screen. Apparently Nya trod on a squeaky part of the floor because I saw myself turn, drawn from the noise, and the Sam on the screen immediately spotted Nya standing stark naked in the middle of the kitchen. Obviously I had been excited at this development, even more so when Nya rushed the last few feet to leap upon me with a joyful look on her face, her arousal spiking as she fiercely locked her lips with mine in a deep kiss.

Watching all this play out on the screen, I gave a quiet, longing sigh. Reliving the past was dredging up these emotions of care and devotion, and I felt my insides begin to twist uncomfortably. There was this sort of painful exuberance that I had, watching this play out, knowing that such intense love had devolved into intense anger at one point.

The Sam on the screen, quite visibly pleased and content, fell into the spell of the kiss for several seconds before he finally broke it, but the nude Nya still clung onto him - me, that is. Miraculously, the drone had been hovering about us the whole time without managing to accidentally depict aspects of Nya's nakedness. Quite impressive cinematography for a dumb machine.

" _Thought you wouldn't be up for at least half an hour_ ," I heard myself say before a couple more kisses were exchanged. " _Wanted to surprise you with breakfast._ "

" _Omelettes, eh?_ " Nya giggled as she spotted the two containers of dextro and levo eggs side by side while they cooked together in two separate pans. " _With leeks and strips of that dried, salted beef? What's the occasion?_ "

" _What's the occasion?_ " I repeated. " _Does one need an occasion to treat you to some real food? God, it makes me sad to say that sometimes - you eat too much paste as it is._ "

" _I'm trying to be conservative,"_ Nya meekly protested. " _I don't like it when you have to be worried about me when I get sick."_

" _I'm your husband. I have a natural right to be worried. Also, when's the last time you got sick in our home? You're practically accumulated at this point, and if I have to make you a real meal to get you out of that suit more, then so be it."_

" _So…"_ Nya gave a sly smile. " _Then there's no special occasion?"_

" _Of course there's an occasion, doofus,"_ I playfully rolled my eyes. _"You're going to become a mother, that's the occasion! Surely that's reason enough for me to break out the apron, as pitiful as my cooking skills are._ "

Ah, now I was remembering this scene in context of the timeline. This must have been mere days, if not the next day, after Nya had announced her pregnancy to me. With that aspect firmly defined, I began to see this moment play out much clearer in my head as it simultaneously was broadcast in front of me.

Nya let out a giggle as she nuzzled my nose with hers before she gave my lips another quick peck. " _Stop selling yourself short, you oaf. It smells delicious. But… thank you for doing this_." Her hands then drifted out of frame, resting upon her belly, but the camera wisely refused to dip its gaze downward. " _I can hardly believe it, myself. In less than a year… we'll be parents_."

The Sam in the vid grinned as he managed to flip the first omelette without spilling any parts of the eggs that were still runny. " _I'm still digesting it myself. It's going to be a wild ride… but damned if I'm not excited about it._ " The next omelette was also flipped without trouble. " _Better get yourself dressed, Nya. I'm almost ready here."_

Nya impishly shook her head as she leaned over the counter, flaunting her chest to me at the same time (but the angle still did not reveal anything). " _I think I'm fine eating like this_."

" _Oh no, you're not,_ " but I saw my own grin grow broader as the other Sam leaned across to give an endearing smack to Nya's butt. " _You're going to be dressed before you sit at the table._ "

" _Aww_ ," Nya pouted, but not before she blushed in response to where I had playfully smacked her. " _But I don't want to be dressed right now._ "

" _Nya, I want to have a nice meal with you and, if I'm being brutally honest, I'm going to be really distracted if you're just going to have your tits out the whole time. I'm sorry to be coarse, but it's the truth."_

Now Nya gave an evil smirk as she began sliding into a provocative pose, her hands still diving out of frame, knowingly twisting and prying in explicit places. " _Worried you might lose control, Sam? Is your constitution really that… weak? I might like to see that happen. Would you take me right here in this room, I wonder? Would you bend me over the table and then have your way with me?_ " Her tongue darted out, snake-like. " _Because… I would really enjoy that."_

I don't know how I managed to muster such restraint back then, because I saw myself in the vid shake my head, although I did see that my own eyes were forced wide open, appalled.

" _You're a wicked woman, Nya,_ " I heard myself whisper on the screen. " _Every time you come out of your suit you become completely untamable!_ " I then looked to the side before my voice lowered an octave. " _You can seduce me after breakfast, but not before. Okay?_ "

Nya nodded frantically, getting the message. But as she headed back into the bathroom (the lens only capturing a quick gray blur from her) her grumbling was still audible over the speakers.

" _I'm not wearing the sweatpants, all right? I hate wearing sweatpants! And nothing cotton! That stuff's either too hot, too tight, and it chafes my nipples!_ "

" _Blah, blah, blah,_ " I made a yapping motion with one hand as I divvied up the eggs on separate plates, fully ignoring Nya now. Once that was all done, I quickly placed the loaded plates on the dining room table and stood back, admiring my handiwork. It was apparent that the candid moment would lose its luster if any more of it was devoted to film and the on-screen Sam turned to smile at the video drone in a fourth-wall breaking moment before he raised his arm to cease recording, bringing the vidscreen back to the main menu, the first clip in the queue finished.

There were two more videos that had been played recently and Nya was still dozing peacefully in bed, so I decided to go ahead and watch the next one, now aware that my heart was beating a little more forcefully since I had sat down in front of the screen.

I sat back and willed myself to relax as I pressed play.

The next few images that blazed up on the screen were a little shakier than the ones that had come before it. It was almost like someone was manhandling the drone in a drunken way, trying (and failing) to capture that sort of cinematic handheld angle that only a professional would be able to carry out. That wasn't the case, though, as the drone was merely attempting to refocus its lens in a darkened room, its suite of software struggling to pierce the darkness for a few seconds.

Eventually, I was able to see that the camera was oriented straight down upon two figures lying on the bed, the one in this very room, in fact. Nya and I were shown resting beside one another, shoulder to shoulder, and unlike in the last vid, the both of us were decent this time.

Upon seeing the drone materialize and hover tauntingly above her head, Nya groaned and covered her face with both hands, but struggled to hold back a smile. " _Ack!_ _Why are you breaking that stupid thing out?_ "

Grinning directly into the camera, I shrugged in my prostrate position. " _We haven't saved enough of these moments between us, Nya. I want to capture this sort of… mumblecore vibe. What's the harm in filming us now?_ "

" _Now?_ " Nya laughed in disbelief as she turned to look at me. " _I'll tell you what the harm is._ _There's going to be harm done to you if you continue to shoot me in such a state._ "

" _And what's wrong with your state, exactly?_ "

" _You know why, bosh'tet!_ " Nya playfully slapped my arm. " _Look at me! I'm enormous!_ "

At the same time that I raised my head on the screen to look at what Nya was talking about, so too did the drone pan out to give the audience additional context. Nya was not wrong at her self-appraisal, for she was quite obviously pregnant, her stomach now swelling with the child she carried inside her. She was wearing a high-cut top that left her gray stomach exposed as well as some loose-fitting shorts. This way, Nya's choice of clothing would not strain against her as her baby grew within her.

Nya very well could have chosen to remain in her enviro-suit for the duration of her pregnancy, as the suits were designed to stretch in the abdomen to accommodate pregnancies in women (and it would be an idiotic oversight if those suits had not been engineered to adapt to such a common female bodily process) but Nya still felt that the enviro-suit restricted her movements and was uncomfortable when she was in this state, so she preferred to wear human clothes instead, at least until she could deliver her baby.

I gave a devious shake of my head as I placed a hand upon Nya's warm and enlarged belly, silently marveling to myself as I felt a bulge nudge against the palm of my head - my daughter was being rather restless.

Still, I levelled my eyes at Nya in amusement while I rested my head on her shoulder. " _It's a completely normal process that billions and billions of women have undergone in the past- it's called pregnancy, Nya. I don't think that this state is all that unexpected, to be honest._ "

Nya rolled her eyes as she pushed my head away from her. " _You could stand to be a little more sympathetic._ "

" _Not when it comes to medical matters, I'm afraid_."

" _Why did I end up with a husband who was so rude?_ " Nya dramatically beseeched the ceiling, now looking into the camera lens as well.

" _I don't think I'm being rude,_ " I played along with her woe. " _I just think that I'm stating the obvious because you're frickin' pregnant!_ "

Nya made a face as her stomach gave a twist. The baby must have kicked her in a sensitive area. " _No sensitivity from you whatsoever_."

" _I'm very sensitive! It would just be disingenuous of me to point out the fact that you have a very normal pregnancy!_ "

" _So it's all down to the fact that you're just too honest?_ "

" _Would you prefer that I lie to you all the time? Oh yeah, that would serve as a perfect precedent for the both of us. A great example to set for our kid, that's for sure._ "

Nya covered her face again as she pulled a tight grimace before she relaxed after a few seconds, doing her best to try to appear calm. I chortled as I snuggled up against her and placed a hand back on her belly - whereupon Nya joined my hand with hers as our fingers interlocked with one another, her wedding ring giving off a dull glint in the low light.

" _When will you learn that I have too much fun pushing your buttons?_ " I asked.

" _Probably never, because you're not funny_ ," Nya shot back.

" _I never claimed to have a good sense of humor._ "

" _Shame. I would have wanted that quality in a mate._ "

" _Eh_ ," I shrugged with a smile. " _You get what you pay for_."

Nya just shook her head and gave my cheek the barest form of a slap that could possibly be imagined with her free hand - fingertips just lightly grazing the skin. We made eye contact for a fraction of a second, ended when Nya forced herself to look away, but it was because she was fighting not to giggle at my oh-so-serious expression. Happy and relaxed, I squirmed an arm underneath Nya's shoulders and pulled her in for a hug on the bed so that she could share some of my warmth - also because I found her irresistible. She was just so sexy in her pregnant state, I don't know why I found that to be so.

" _Bosh'tet_ ," she mumbled.

" _I love you too_ ," I said tonelessly.

The vid considerately ended at that and, returning my attention to the present, I took another backwards glance to check if Nya was still sleeping, if the noises from the vidscreen had not awakened her yet. They had not, so I felt rather assured as I indicated for the next clip to play using my tool.

The vidscreen immediately responded to my commands.

The screen then displayed the interior of a comfy, softly-colored room that I instantly recognized as my daughter's room, which was just a few meters away from where I currently sat. The camera slowly revolved around Nya and I, who were lovingly standing by and watching over a crib (seeing the crib hurt, knowing what I had done to it), which was encased inside a clear, plastic, germ-proof shield. Within that crib was a tiny little thing with pudgy limbs, her eyes serenely shut as she slept. Her skin was the same color as Nya's, not to mention that I swore that she had received her nose from her mother as well. The baby's three-fingered hands twitched and clenched on air as she gurgled in her sleep, a shock of black hair also messily adorning her head. She definitely got that part from her mother too.

Nya and I had probably been watching our child for up to half an hour, I surmised, just carefully studying the new little one that we would be looking after all too briefly. I realized with a pang that in just a few days' time after this scene had been shot, every good part of my life that I had known would all be upended in the most catastrophic of ways. Regardless, I was enthralled at this piece of history, this moment of my existence where everything had seemed to be completely perfect - I would have not changed a thing for the entire week that my daughter had been alive. It had seemed like the universe had aligned everything in my favor… and we were altogether happier for it.

The two of us on the screen were both still in our sleep clothes - Nya having pilfered one of my robes - as we continued to look at our daughter. I gave a one-armed hug to Nya and softly kissed the top of her head in pride. I knew how badly she had wanted a child for so long and finally, she had gotten her wish.

No… _we_ had gotten our wish.

All things considered, pregnancy had suited Nya rather well. She had steeled her way through the entire eight and a half months with nary a complaint, except whenever she played up her condition in order to fish for compliments from me. Sure, she may have had a few morning sickness episodes here and there, but the bulk of her gestation period was spent in a very relaxed routine. Just in case, and partially because I was not up to snuff with quarian reproductive systems as I would have liked to have been, we did our due diligence to go to the hospital to have the pregnancy examined each month to ensure that everything was proceeding as normal. I'd like to think that we were accounting for every outcome in this case - I now had a baby to worry about instead of just my wife's poor immune system, a facet which may very well had led to complications in the actual pregnancy if we had not been careful. There was no telling what kind of problems would arise if Nya had been deathly ill due to carelessness. We apparently had no reason to fear because the baby in her womb looked healthy every month that we visited, and when Nya finally went into labor, it had been a much more straightforward process than I would have originally anticipated.

Nya only had to muster through seven hours of labor and an hour after that of hard pushing. She had been in pain, as expected, but not nearly as much as an average human woman would undergo during birth, it seemed. Whereas a human would be squawking and sweating buckets during delivery, Nya bore her discomfort in stoic grace, the only discernible noises of pain from her coming in soft grunts. Everyone had to be sealed in our own, shiny plastic germaphobe suits for this procedure, including me. The doctors, the nurses, even some of the equipment had to have plastic bags placed atop them, for a quarian child had the most atrocious immune system one could imagine and making this place cleaner than a disease control center was of the highest priority. Hell, I was just glad that the hospital supported quarian births to begin with because things would have been problematic otherwise.

In spite of the heavy obstacles, the birth had gone off without a hitch and pretty soon Nya had recovered enough to start walking again, having shaken off the painkillers that she had received, and both of us were soon heading home hours later, with our new daughter in tow.

She was a quiet one, our daughter. Eerily well-behaved. We still had not picked out a name for her yet. By the time this vid had been shot we were still having trouble finding a name that held meaning for the both of us. We didn't want to rush this important decision and give the baby a name she might regret later in life. We wanted to be absolutely sure on the matter - to Nya, having a good name was almost sacred. She wanted to do right by her child.

As the two proud parents stood over their handiwork, I saw myself in the vid lean in close to Nya's ear.

" _She's perfect_ ," I whispered.

" _We're parents now,_ " Nya marveled. " _Can you believe it?_ "

" _She'll be calling you 'mom' in no time_."

Nya could not resist bouncing on her toes in anticipation at that. " _I can't wait! Her first words… her first steps… Sam, we… we have a daughter! Did you ever think she could look so wonderful?_ "

I tilted my head as I smiled down up the sleeping infant in the vid. " _Better than I ever could have dreamed._ "

Full disclosure, I had never particularly thought of babies as rather cute before until now. To me, "cute" is merely a safe term used to describe someone _else's_ baby when they ask you for an opinion on their appearance. All babies look pretty much the same - nearly bald head, wrinkled face, fat limbs, nothing that had stood out to me as anything to gush over.

However, there is something different about one's opinion when you look upon your own child as an infant. The chemicals in your brain react differently, knowing that you will be looking after this baby until they become an adult. The fact that this is _your_ kid and no one else's completely changes one's outlook. This child, _my_ child, came from someone I dearly loved, and they were the result of a decision that this person and I had made together wholeheartedly. They were a symbol, proof of my strong devotion to that woman. We had wanted a little one to look after and now… we finally had _her_.

Our family just got bigger. Wow… what a journey it had been to even get this far. To think that years ago I had wanted to end my life so selfishly. Look at where I was now.

I now had a little daughter… my own child.

My wife loved me tremendously.

I was a father now.

" _I'm proud of us, Sam,_ " the Nya on the screen proclaimed as she clutched my hand in hers. " _We've really done it, haven't we?_ "

" _Yes…_ " I had said in a far-away voice. " _We certainly have_."

Silently, the vid closed on itself, abruptly ending. The clip had suddenly reached the end. The control panel disappeared, leaving me staring at an empty screen, stuck spellbound as I quietly begged to see more, to get another look at my daughter.

I just wanted to see her again.

"We were happy once, weren't we?" a tender voice behind me suddenly spoke, a voice that I realized a split-second late was _not_ coming from the vidscreen.

My heartrate spiked in shock, but I didn't physically react. Instead, I shut the screensaver off with a blip and began to contemplate the blank wall as I leaned back in my chair, not ready to look Nya in the eye just yet.

"Did I wake you?" I asked instead, evading the question for now.

"No," Nya said. "You didn't."

"How long were you watching?"

"The last few minutes. It was enough."

I tapped my fingers upon my knees as I continued to face away from my wife. "So many memories… they all feel like they came from another life. You, me, our daughter. It was all perfect. I wouldn't have traded it for anything else."

"And yet… she's gone."

"Yeah," I sighed as I finally rose to my feet. "She's gone."

I turned around to find Nya lying on her side in the bed - she was using one arm to prop her head up to talk to me, eyes filled with an infinite sadness. I bit my lip as I moved over to sit on the edge of the bed and tentatively offered a hand for her to take and she slid her hand over, the one with the wedding ring that I had given her so long ago adorned upon a finger. Nya quickly accepted the gesture smoothly and she gave a wistful smile as she rubbed her thumb along the back of my hand.

"I've made so many mistakes lately," Nya uttered through timid breaths.

"We _both_ have made many mistakes," I corrected gently. "We've just… we've been headed in the wrong directions for so long that this… where we are now feels like a fever dream."

I beheld Nya with a piercing look, a hard glint in my eyes momentarily forming only to dissipate like a mirage. Nya still caught the sign and the corners of her mouth bent in a concerned frown.

"For nearly a year, Nya… for nearly a year I could not get this close to you without you lashing out at me, for reasons that... I completely understand. I'm not blaming you for anything - I don't _want_ to blame you - but… does this right now - us talking - seem so unbelievable that you're thinking that this might not be real?"

Nya's hand had a miniscule tremble run through it as she dimly nodded.

"I had… so much blame that I wanted to throw around, Sam. I was in pain and, for some reason, I thought that you were unable to understand my position. I was jealous that you were apparently not suffering as much as I was, when all along you've been simply… showing it differently - holding it inside. We had this wonderful little baby in our life and then… she was taken from us without warning. Quicker than we could blink. For days I wondered why we were so unlucky, if maybe we had done something wrong. I would have blamed everyone else in the galaxy _but_ you. And yet... you told me that it _was_ your fault, that you _wanted_ to take all the blame. You willingly made yourself a target… and I was stupid enough to think that you didn't _care_."

I didn't know what to say, because whatever popped into my head for me to potentially voice sounded so insensitive if I were to say them out loud. Nya studied my face and seemed to grasp the inner conflict that I was undergoing and decided to continue.

"If anyone thinks they're dreaming, it's me, Sam. I haven't done anything to justify you coming back to me. I mean… I can't believe how _terribly_ I've been treating you. I've been screaming at you, insulting you, accusing you of murder even. I would understand if you never wanted to see me again after all that and yet, here you are. Even after what happened in Santa Cruz."

"Yeah…" I reminisced with a one-shoulder shrug. "You were… rather forceful back then."

"Keelah, Sam. I was _hitting_ you! Slapping you in the face! I was shouting at you, trying to make you say to me, ' _I hate you!_ '"

"You weren't yourself. I wasn't myself. None of us could think straight - we were too blind at the time."

"That still doesn't excuse what I did. Back there, I _wanted_ you to admit that you hated me! Sam… I would never… had I known…"

"Did you really want me to say that?" I asked, my face neutral.

The quarian then held her head in a hand before clasping her mouth tight, distraught that I could see her so vulnerable. "I thought… that if you said such a horrible thing… that it would have made it easier for me to break away from you. I wanted _you_ to say those three words… because _I_ could not do such a thing and mean it."

That statement right there, even if Nya did not know it, helped implant a large amount of credence in her actions, even if they had all been upsetting at the time. To know and hear her admit how remorseful she was for past transgressions made this admission feel all the more real to me, like she was absolutely determined to correct the mistakes she had made in the past.

It was only fair that I try to match her at every step.

"Even after all that had happened," I reassured, "I could never have said that to you anyway."

A slight dribble of tears was quickly blinked away in Nya's eyes. "Really?"

"Of course. You're the mother of my child… even though she never had any of my genes to begin with. I can't say something like that so easily to the person I made such an important promise to."

Nya looked lost for a moment.

"My baby… she was so beautiful. Why did she have to die, Sam? What could we have done to save her?"

A new type of hurt was spreading, a kind of fiery throb that ached icy coldness at the same time, one that radiated from my chest. It gave me pause as I struggled to answer the question.

"I… I wish…" I choked out while my hand began to clench tighter upon Nya's fingers, "...I wish I could give you an answer, Nya. It's just that… sometimes we can't predict what will happen to us. I don't know if it was because we weren't prepared more… or… or if I really was negligent… or if she was-,"

"Shh, shh," Nya soothed as she sat up straight and edged herself against my back. Her arms wrapped around me from behind and her fingers delicately dug into the flesh of my chest as she pulled me back slightly so that she could press up against me. "I'm not trying to upset you."

"I know… but-,"

"I hurt, just like you," Nya said as she placed a hand over her heart. "Our daughter will always be a part of us. We had her because we really did love each other so much back then." Nya's eyes bashfully dropped downward before she cloyed her lungs with a gigantic breath for reassurance. "Do you think… that someday… things can go back to the way they once were?"

My hands rose to meet Nya's on my chest as I considered the earnestness of her question.

"I don't know," was my honest reply. "Maybe not completely, Nya. I think that things are always going to be different between us, ever since that horrible day. For those wonderful few days we had with our daughter, I had this glimpse of that perfect life I had unconsciously been striving towards, the goal I had never known I had been chasing all this time. When she died, I lost that goal, that hope. I will never forget that horrible feeling that impaled me when I saw you with her body on that day. No… things will never be the same," I then turned my head slowly so that I could peer into Nya's eyes, "but that doesn't mean that we can't at least give it a shot."

For the first time today, an optimistic look spread across Nya's face.

" _I_ want to try," Nya urged as she firmly pressed herself forward in emphasis. "But I can't do it alone."

"Neither can I. I need you, Nya, so that I can finally stop hurting. I would certainly like to make everything right again, as close as it can be back to normal."

The two of us shared a forlorn smile for a moment, our heads dipping as we relaxed in the presence of each other. Nothing escalated beyond that, as all we simply needed right now was our soft, intimate touches as we held out our contact for as long as possible.

The muted thump from the next room, the sound akin to someone throwing an overripe fruit at a wall, helped derail this tender moment that had taken quite a while for us to create.

"What the hell?" I muttered as my spine began to tingle in anticipation as the both of us turned to discern the source of the noise. I then rose from the bed and headed towards the door to the living room. "Stay here for a minute," I told Nya as I stepped out, who proceeded to protest but could do nothing since she was still too weak to leave the bed.

A quick examination of the living room revealed nothing that looked to be out of the ordinary. At least on first glance. I even walked to the front door to see if the noise had been someone knocking, but the security cameras weren't showing anyone soliciting the entrance, nor had the logs showed that anyone had ventured over for a visit in the last few hours.

Which was weird, because I know I had heard a sound come from somewhere.

I was about to dismiss the noise as either the apartment settling or perhaps something in the cupboards unexpectedly falling over when suddenly, Rie and Chandler exited from the guest room, similarly nonplussed, with Sagan right behind them.

"Did you guys hear something just now?" I pointed a finger at them.

Both of them nodded right away. "Yeah, was that you, Sam?" Rie asked after covering her mouth to suppress a yawn.

I shook my head. "No, it wasn't me. I guess it wasn't you guys either, then. Odd."

Chandler then leveled an arm towards the window after sleepily scratching the back of his head. "Maybe that had something to do with it?"

Perhaps Chandler had a point, seeing as the weird, circular object that was stuck to the outside of the window certainly had not been there before, at least to my knowledge. A spattering of sticky gel was smeared around the edges of the tiny disk, almost like it had been fired out of a cannon from a distance and had smacked into the thick glass on impact. I peered past where the disk was stuck to the undulating landscape of holographic advertisements and pristine glass buildings beyond, trying to see if anyone on the opposite ends of the avenue had been lobbing weird projectiles at our window. This might even have been just some punks flying around in a skycar, shooting… whatever the hell these disks were at random places and maybe this window just so happened to be one of many hapless targets.

Stupidly, I was too slow on the uptake to have the realization that whoever stuck this… thing to my window did so as a calculated move. That kind of cognizance did not come to me until a tiny blue dot on the underside of the disk began to glow and a thin beam speared into the room, projecting a humanoid form into the middle feet away from where I stood.

And who did we know who loved to communicate via hologram?

The image turned, detecting my presence. Static coughed around the form and the almost imperceptible glow of eyes behind a thickened visor sparked fury as my demonic foe beheld me with a great hatred.

Then the hologram spoke.

" _Time's up, tough guy,_ " Eyzn's weary rasp growled through as his image slowly clenched a hand in front of his fist.

That was it for the hologram as it then winked out as quickly as it had appeared - apparently the entire thing was a prerecorded message of some sort.

Before I could even shout out loud, I was driven to my knees as the window exploded inward.

There was a brief flash and the clear surface spiderwebbed in a nanosecond.

The actual detonation was small in comparison to what I might have initially expected, but it was still loud enough for my ears to be ringing a bit while all other sounds were relegated to the background. Shards of safety glass peppered my back, feeling like a light hail, not in any way sharp enough to cut at my skin. Rie and Chandler were also on the floor, momentarily disoriented from the explosion as well. Sagan, as usual, was still standing on his feet, apparently unaffected.

 _Dumbass_ , I cursed myself as I got back to my feet. Why did I not realize that the disk had been a breaching charge? Those things are specifically _designed_ to blow open doors and windows, for god's sake. It should have been obvious that Eyzn would have gotten his hands on that kind of equipment simply to use against me.

" _Arrgh_ ," I yowled as I rubbed at an ear in a futile gesture, still mildly disoriented. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Who's attacking?!" Rie yelled as she ducked behind the couch.

"Eyzn! It has to be!" Chandler hollered back, even though he was less than a foot away from Rie. The charge's detonation really must have messed with their hearing good and proper.

"Where is he?!" I roared as I crouched down behind the kitchen counter and groped for a nearby knife, all nerves wired hot. "I'll kill the bastard!"

Half a minute passed of us just sitting stationary in our places, too unnerved to move lest more chaos and destruction were to unexpectedly barrel our way. My eyes scanned the broken window and beyond, desperate to try and pertain the current situation. I looked for Eyzn, knowing he had to be close. He would want to be here in person, knowing his huge obsession with me.

I was then aware of a clomping series of vibrations as Sagan rushed over to my position. The geth knelt down next to me, his two optics straightened in a vertical line.

"Samuel," Sagan said, "We have detected multiple armed intruders approaching our levels from the nearby lifts. They will be upon our position in four minutes."

Ah, so they were deciding to come in the front door for once. Unexpected. Perhaps the breaching of the window was a red herring.

"Is Eyzn among them?" I growled.

"Unknown, but there is a more pertinent issue. The detonation charge has compromised this area. If we remain here, there will be a grave risk to Creator McLeod's health."

What?

Oh… my… fucking… god.

I had completely failed to realize the inherent danger that Eyzn's initial move of blowing out my window was supposed to introduce. I had thought that the idiot had just blown the element of surprise with his initial destruction of my property, but that was not been the point at all. He had to have known that Nya was still recovering from Vahl's initial attack, to the point where he had guessed that Nya was most likely not in an enviro-suit any longer in order to recover. By destroying the window, billions and billions of microscopic pathogens could stream into this apartment from the outside, bypass the air scrubbers which kept this apartment clean enough for Nya to survive, which would overwhelm her immune system, causing her to fall into a coma and die from an allergic reaction.

Sagan was right. We couldn't stay here. This had no longer become a defensible position. Now, it had turned into an escape.

" _Masks!_ " I screamed as I shot towards the bedroom door, where Nya must have been confused out of her mind from all the loud noises that had occurred out of her sight. "Masks! Get your fucking masks on _now!_ "

I picked up my own breathing mask from where I had previously deposited it upon the couch, a dark gray contraption that had the effect of making me look like a supervillain when worn, and shoved it over my mouth and nose. Rie and Chandler followed suit and the four of us scurried into the bedroom, taking great care to keep the door open for as short of a time as possible, where a terrified Nya was sitting upright upon the bed, completely bewildered.

"Eyzn's coming," I explained to her as I tossed her another breathing mask from the dresser. "We need to get you out of here. Now."

"Can you put on your suit?" Rie asked her.

Nya started to breathe more rapidly as panic began to consume her. "I… I don't think I _can…_ "

Rie and I both blinked at that. "Nya," I begged, "you _have_ to. You need to get into your suit or… or you'll die."

I set the unrolled enviro-suit out on the bed from where it had lay on the floor for her to get into, but right away, I realized that something was wrong when Nya began the attempt of trying to get herself into it.

The first issue that I noticed was that Nya apparently had difficulty moving over to where her suit lay on the bed. It was some kind of weird crawl in which her legs were particularly unresponsive, and Nya was gritting her teeth as she was clawing her way across the blankets in an effort to reach her suit. It was almost as if she was struggling with a pain in her lower back, but this was not weakness in relation to pain, it was weakness corresponding to her limbs refusing to move at all. In an act of pity, I handed the suit over to her, but Nya was growing more and more hysterical when her limp legs were barely able to lift themselves into the lower half of the suit. I knew that even if I were to try to help Nya get all resealed again, that enviro-suit was simply too restrictive for me to even be of use in trying to fit Nya into it. The suit had been designed to adhere very tightly around Nya's body - realistically, it could only be put on perfectly by the wearer. Nya's vicious wrenching of her enviro-suit against her body, trying to shimmy it into place up her thighs, was only making matters worse and she was becoming only more frenzied as she was continually denied the application of her protective covering.

"Stop, Nya. Stop," I ordered her as she was now unsuccessfully trying to shove her arms into the suit. "This isn't working."

"What's happening?" Rie anxiously hung back. "Why can't she get into her suit?"

"It's the neurotoxin Vahl gave her," I continued to face Nya as I cupped her chin in a hand, stilling her and refusing to let her break down in her fear. "It took its toll on her and she's still recuperating. Her nerves won't respond properly for at least a few more days - she's still impaired."

Grimly, I slid out what portion of the suit Nya had managed to force herself into so that she could be free of it for the time being. I rolled it up and shoved it into a nearby pack, where all of the other mechanisms of the suit had been collected. I then threw this pack over my shoulders and tightened the straps so that it didn't bounce against me.

"Enemies arriving on-site in one minute," Sagan loudly reported.

" _No, no, no, no, no!_ " Nya was whimpering, her eyes terrified and darting in all directions. "I can't… I need to get out… Sam, my suit-,"

"You're not going to be doing anyone any good if you fall to pieces now," I told her as I now placed both hands on her cheeks, the edges of my palms scraping along the breathing mask over her face. "Nya, listen to me. We can't get your suit on. You're still too weak and the suit's too complex for you to put together in your state. _We can't stay here._ We have to leave in moments and we're going to have to do it without your suit. Now, you have a breathing mask on. You'll be safe as long as that stays on your face. But you have to be brave. I need you to be brave, okay?"

Nya's hands clasped my wrists and clenched on them hard, but her body was starting to calm down as she forced herself to take deeper breaths. "Brave…" she whispered. "I'll… I'll try…"

"Trying's not good enough this time. Promise me, Nya."

"I… I…" Nya's body finally went limper as she relaxed. "I promise."

"Atta girl," I beamed, but the expression was hid by my own breathing mask. "Can you stand, at least?"

"Barely," she admitted with a heavy sigh.

I mouthed a familiar four-letter curse.

"That'll have to do," I said instead as I looked to the ceiling, probably for some mystical guidance if there was a higher power watching over us in amusement. "Okay, this is what's going to happen. You're going to hang onto me and we're going to have to walk out this door, right into enemy fire. It's not going to be pretty, but it's the only option we have. You just hold onto me… and keep that mask on your face."

Nya touched the edge of her breathing mask, her eyes now portraying a worried look. "Sam, this mask is all that's protecting me. I'm even more exposed without my suit. If something happens… if this comes off my face… even for a second... I'll probably die. No, the hallway out there is full of pathogens. I _will_ die, Sam, if I'm exposed."

"I don't want to think about that right now," I gritted as I now sat on the edge of the bed, to the left of Nya, and threw her arm over my shoulders. "I'm not going to let that happen to you. Now get ready. We're moving in three, two, one."

With a hefting groan, my left arm reached up and clasped Nya's left hand at the same time my legs straightened out, lifting Nya off the bed. She sagged against my right side, nearly deadweight, her feet struggling to hold even her own body weight up. I could see that her knees were trembling heavily and that her bare feet were uselessly scraping along the carpeted ground. Well, she was in my hands now. I had to do everything in my power to protect her.

Whatever happened next depended all on me. I hope that Nya trusted me completely.

"Do we have _any_ goddamn weapons we can use?" Chandler was hollering as he nervously looked to the front door.

"Almost forgot about that," I muttered as I helped guide Nya closer to the edge of the room. "Sagan! Get the crate!"

Alerted from my order, the geth quickly bounded into the walk-in closet and immediately proceeded to create a series of banging noises from within. Everyone in the room aside from me looked quite puzzled as to what the geth was doing exactly, but all their questions would be answered once Sagan walked back into the bedroom, an enormous box now being transported in his powerful limbs.

Sagan set the box down onto the bed and flipped the latches one by one. With the last lock flipped, the geth casually knocked the plastic cover away, revealing the contents of the crate.

A modest collection of guns, all encased in springy black foam and painted an unremarkable gray color, lay revealed within the crate. Two pistols, a bandolier of thermal clips, a couple ammo drums, and a gigantic shotgun were the items all set on display. All of the provided magazines and drums were filled with the proper ammunition - I took the two drums meant for the semi-automatic shotgun before taking the larger weapon itself. It was a tricky endeavor to hold the shotgun steady and slap a drum into it with only one arm, seeing as I was still holding on Nya as I performed this series of actions, but I managed to make do.

Rie grabbed the pistol that was the more modern-looking of the two (seeing that it was the only one where she could fit her hand comfortably in the grip) while Chandler took the other. Both spent a bit of time loading their weapons, Chandler taking longer than usual due to his pistol's rather archaic design.

"Where the hell did you find _these_ things?" Chandler grumbled as he struggled to rack the slide on his due to a very tense spring.

"You'd be surprised at what they sell at gun shows," I replied, unconcerned at his griping right now.

It was true that the array of guns that I had procured and set aside for myself were a bit outdated in terms of looks. Hell, my shotgun was based off of a mid-20th century model that was still being built today, mostly for gun enthusiasts - it didn't even have any mass accelerators! It was an honest-to-god, hammer-fired, projectile-based shotgun. But there was a good reason as to why I had bought this gun in the first place.

One benefit of me using larger projectiles in my shotgun was that they were propelled by the weapon at a fraction of the speed that mass accelerator weapons used today. If our enemies were using personal shields, then this is where the shotgun would come into its own. Shields were meant to slow the velocity of any projectile that comes into its range, meaning that if someone were to shoot a bullet using a traditional mass-accelerated pistol, the shield would dissipate all of the built up kinetic energy and cause the bullet to slow to near a dead stop. The greater the velocity, the greater the effect. The interesting thing about these personal shields is that they had a specified range at which they automatically activated against high-velocity projectiles, a range that striker-fired, slower bullets or shells that were fired out of my shotgun would fall under and therefore not be subject to such a barrier. All I had to do was make sure that my aim was true and I could mow down anyone in my way. I had three drums worth, one already loaded into the gun, with 32 rounds each of 12-gauge buckshot. Fact of the matter was, if someone got hit with what I was currently toting, they would pretty much cease to exist, shields or no shields.

"You know," Chandler said as he triple-checked that his pistol had a thermal clip in it, "I hate to be a Negative Nancy all the time, but do we actually have a plan on getting out of here besides just making a brazen charge outside?"

"A brazen charge is going to have to be part of it," I admitted as I continued to partially hoist Nya as we stumbled into the living room, her weight sagging against my side. "Sagan's got part two covered."

"He does?" Chandler's face lit up. "What is it?"

Sagan withdrew the pulse rifle from the slot upon his back, an oblong and organically shaped weapon that glowed chartreuse. Greenish arcs of plasma scurried along the exposed coils in a fiendish crackle, keeping the deadly globules of vaporizing energy at bay.

"A skycar landing pad is located at the opposite end of the corridor," Sagan explained. "We have exactly 76.25 meters to traverse in order to reach our designated transportation, which we have reserved. A six-seater will be parked on the pad, waiting for us to enter."

"And how many hostiles do we have to go through?" Rie asked, her face glum.

"Last approximation was thirteen armed individuals as of four minutes ago. However, we are unable to access the building's systems anymore at this time - we are being electronically interfered with. This estimate is subject to a variance of 25%."

"Well, those odds are just fucking great," Chandler sighed sarcastically. "We're not exactly equipped to take on an entire force now, are we? I mean, we're already down one person!"

Nya stirred against me as she struggled to lift her head. "I can fight…" she gasped. "Just give me a gun."

I shot that down without a second thought. "No way. You can barely hold yourself up much less lift a gun."

"Samuel," Sagan said urgently, trying to instill in all of us that time was of the essence. "We need to leave _now_."

"Yeah, I hear you. I hear you," I gritted as I clumsily hefted the shotgun in my left hand. No time like the present, I guess. Maybe this was always going to be the outcome given to all of us. Damn that bastard Eyzn.

If there was a hell, I would revel in the fact that I would get the chance to send Eyzn there soon enough.

"Make sure you're loaded and ready," I reminded as I held my shotgun to the closed front door, my finger itching to rest upon the trigger. "Are we good?"

Chandler nervously chuckled. Rie swore several times over. Sagan calmly held his weapon in a fierce and determined grip. Nya groaned against me but perceived the doorway with a devious smoldering of energy locked deep in her chest.

My hand clenched the shotgun so hard that I thought I was going to pop my fingers out of their sockets. No matter what happened, I vowed that I was never going to give Eyzn another chance to send me back to that hellhole on Earth. I was not going to keel over like I did last time.

We would all go kicking and screaming.

"Ready when you are, asshole," I whispered under my breathing mask.

Sagan then hit the door release and everything quickly went to hell.

I was only able to get a quick peek out into the inoffensively wallpapered hallway, a corridor that was lined with fancy, curved glass lamps that emitted a soft, amber light. The dimness in contrast to the apartment nearly ruined my vision and it took my eyes a disastrously long time to try and peer through the tar-like murk that lay just beyond the threshold.

But before that could happen, about halfway down the hall, a bright white flash erupted from behind a corner and a searing boom exploded in my ears a nanosecond later. It was more like a snap, I realized - a sonic boom emitted in the wake of a bullet just barely passing by my head. I swore I could see blue ripples in the air as a result of my catastrophic vision trying to interpret the fact that I had just been shot at. Sweat sprung up upon my skin, nerves caused my teeth to chatter. I felt icy cold and blazing hot all at once.

Fear dissolved into an adrenaline high, which saturated my brain. My fight or flight instincts were going haywire. There was no choice but to go on the attack. I used this decisive fact to feed my rage, to throw as much fuel onto this fire as possible.

I had to lash out with all my strength.

With the butt of the shotgun firmly shoved into my shoulder, I began to shout indiscriminately as I pulled the trigger as fast as I could, sending wide and dispersed cones of buckshot to careen off the walls and ceiling of the hall. I could see a few dark, suited shapes scurry for cover as I fired on their positions. More quarians jumping out of the woodwork. They clung to the doorways of other apartments, the thin walls partially obscuring them from my view. Even though they had a good shot at me right now, I was laying down such a huge array of cover fire that I was keeping them at bay. For now.

Miniscule pinpricks peppered the walls, a ragged uneven circle of dotted fire. Splinters from wood desks flew under my withering assault. Glass from cloudy lamps was chipped away. Fibers from the carpet were torn apart.

My shotgun sang death notes as it bucked and reared with each report.

Quickly, now that the return fire had been thinned, I mimicked what my enemies were doing and shot towards the first doorway on the right, keeping Nya and I out of the sight. Everyone else followed my example and took the doorway on the left, opposite my position. Chandler leaned out and popped off a few shots with his pistol. His aim was better than mine because I heard a yell of pain. I took the risk to poke my head out just in time to see a wounded quarian getting dragged over to the elevator bay by a couple of his allies.

I brought the shotgun up to bear again and fired three rounds from behind the corner in rapid fashion. Some of the lamps exploded into translucent dust and a chandelier was dislodged from the ceiling and crashed into the floor, spilling tacky fake crystals all over the carpet.

Spent shells littered the floor at my feet. I wanted to rub my shoulder where the shotgun had been kicking into me, but with my other arms clinging onto Nya protectively, that was not going to happen. I guess I had not been expecting this gun to have such a huge amount of recoil to it due to my more recent experience wielding weapons that handled such blowback in a calmer fashion. This shotgun was like a bucking bronco in comparison - no elegance to how it delivered its payload whatsoever. There was going to be a horrendous bruise on my shoulder after this was all said and done, if it was not starting to form already.

"Go forward!" I roared as I was already staggering out into the hallway to move to the next doorway.

My shotgun barked as I furiously clenched down on the trigger again and again. My hand was starting to ache with the amount of force I was using to keep a tight grip on the weapon. Bullets from Eyzn's indoctrinated cult zipped by me and smacked the walls right in front of my path, but I hunkered down with Nya, who was still holding on my body, and stumbled into the next recess, temporarily safe once again.

Chandler and Rie were now moving up as well, with Sagan staying behind momentarily to provide cover fire. Aqua streams of plasma were now shooting down the passageway - a few stray bolts actually impacted with the carpet and set small fires upon it. The quarian attackers hunkered behind the walls in response to our deadly counterattack - I could count eight… maybe nine different individuals now standing between us and the door to the landing pad just beyond.

A bullet then ate into the wall just inches from my face. Sparks exploded right at me and I gave a shout as I yanked my head back, the molten globules just barely missing my eyes.

" _Fucking hell!_ " I swore as I kicked the wall behind me in a fury.

Things were heating up rapidly. Seeing bullet holes rapidly become punched into the walls from all the crossfire was not helping my disposition any. One wonders what the rest of the tenants in this building were thinking. If any of them had any sense, C-Sec would have been called by now to defuse the situation even though by the time they would arrive, this entire ordeal would be long over.

Infuriated, I edged my shotgun out from behind the corner to aim back down the hall. I had a glimpse of an armored quarian crouching just a few meters ahead - struggling with a jammed clip in his barrel. The alien did not even know I was aiming at him until I unleashed a blast of my own, which caught him firmly on his side.

The force of the impact spun the quarian completely around before he collapsed. Blood had splattered the door next to him and it was slowly leaking out of the area where his suit had been shredded, a wide swath of his body right around his rib cage looked to have been torn apart. He was done for - even if the immune systems of quarians were somewhat competent, a wound like that was a death sentence all by itself.

Chandler and Sagan were continuing to pop off rounds of their own, also experiencing success (Rie was hanging back, unable to get a shot off due to her position being overcrowded). Hoarse cries and muffled whumps were emitted above the din as projectiles found their mark. A few quarians lay slumped in the middle of the hall, some with blood slowly pooling around where they fell, others with smoking holes in their bodies from where beams of plasma had seared right through them, cauterizing the wounds.

"We're moving up," I told Nya as I gave her a brief one-armed hug to alert her. "Get ready!"

"Right," Nya breathed as she held a grim expression.

With a quick intake of breath, I scurried back out into the hallway with Nya in tow, moving as fast as we could to the next bit of cover. A thin veneer of smoke hung at the ceiling and the sour bite of cordite stung my nose. I unleashed two more shotgun blasts as I rushed, buckshot piercing the throat of a quarian while another littered the front of his enviro-suit with holes, turning him into Swiss cheese.

 _A couple more meters to go_ , I thought, _and we'll be good to go_. Just a few more seconds.

I looked behind me for a moment to call out for everyone else to close the gap. That turned out to be a mistake.

While I wasn't looking forward, a quarian peeked out from behind a corner several doors down, a pistol tentatively held in a two-handed sideways grip. Nya saw it too late to cry out a warning and I stumbled heavily as I felt a white-hot line rake against the side of my leg. I did not fall though, but I came damn close. Blood started to soak into the ragged tear of my pants, each step wrenching the cut open deeper and deeper.

"You okay, Sam?!" Nya cried through her mask. I was about to affirm when I saw a hot splash of blood erupt from Nya's arm. She screamed and jolted against me violently, her arm already dribbling profusely from the bullet wound.

"Son of a bitch!" I bellowed, completely infuriated at the sight of Nya getting shot.

I wheeled about in the hallway and found the quarian that had been doing the most recent bout of shooting. He was in the middle of reloading. I still had shells in the drum of my weapon. I pulled the trigger only once and most of the quarian's head disappeared in a fountain of blood and brains after a hail of metal razors had careened into it.

The disgusting sight did not faze me at all. Once upon a time, I would have been horrified to learn that this would be the person I would become. It would be easy for me to judge myself then that I appeared to be a person who committed wanton murder without a care in the world. If only it were so simple. Killing was a dour business, but it was necessary. To help others I cared about, to protect them, I needed to answer with such violence of my own. I needed to match the fury that I faced otherwise I too would be destroyed.

Three more bursts down the hall from my gun and the slide finally clicked open. I hit the magazine release button and let the ammo drum carelessly tumble to the floor. We had almost reached the next doorway - I would be able to reload from there. I picked up the pace, turning our awkward gait into a near-stumble, as we hastened to reach our temporary salvation.

Only to find out that our intended cover was already occupied.

With a roar, a quarian lunged out towards the both of us, his arms outstretched. My shotgun wasn't reloaded yet - it had no shells in the chamber. On instinct, I held the gun out to ward off the charging alien, but he pushed it aside as he made to tackle us, his own gun apparently discarded. The force of his charge slammed the three of us against the wall, where the frenzied quarian started to hurl his blows in all directions, trying to knock Nya and I into unconsciousness. I was pinned between him and the wall, with no way to get him off.

I bellowed for assistance at the same time that Nya raised her foot to kick the man away. She bent her knee and planted her foot in the middle of the quarian's chest before pushing the man out into the center of the hallway, successfully beating him away.

Sagan then knelt down from where he was situated a couple meters back and fired one beam from his rifle straight into the man's chest, puncturing it all the way through, which left a smoking hole right where his sternum was.

The quarian looked down at his chest in horror and seemed to realize that the end was nearly upon him. Stumbling forward, he uttered a low cry as he made toward us one last time before he pitched forward to tumble onto the ground.

Except that the quarian had his arms spread out wide, his fingers curved like hooks. As he had fallen, one of his hands had scraped along Nya's face and caught one of the straps on her breathing mask. His weight pulled the mask down, ripping the airtight seal that had been formed before the strap snapped out of his fingers, allowing him to finish his descent, stone dead.

I heard a tiny hiss of released air and turned almost involuntarily.

In shock, before she could stop herself, Nya took a panicked breath.

Suddenly starting to tremble, she realized what had happened as her hands rose up to confirm her worst fears.

" _NO!_ " I roared as I saw the breathing mask half-hanging from Nya's face, my own heart seemingly stopping.

It was too late, Nya had been so stunned from her sudden exposure that she had been taking several breaths of unfiltered air purely on reflex. Her hands had trailed upward and found the dangling mask. Nya's badly shaking hands struggled to put it back over her face as she began to incoherently mumble.

Aghast, I shoved Nya into the corner, safe from the last vestiges of gunfire, as I helped seal the breathing mask back where it belonged. The mask hissed shut over Nya's face, but it was too little, too late. Nya was beginning to shudder horribly, her neck bulging as she understood the terrible fate that awaited her.

"No… no…" I was hoarsely stammering out as I held my wife's head in my hands. Precious few seconds, such brief moments - Nya had only been unmasked for such a short amount of time. Yet it would only have taken a few seconds for the worst to occur. So many dangerous pathogens, non-fatal to humans but deadly to quarians, all lurked in the air here… and Nya had just been exposed to them.

Nya's hands grasped my shirt as she struggled to focus in on me. "Sam… you have… to…" she struggled to speak before she was cut off with a horrible cough. She was about to sink to her knees but I caught her just in time, although she was already hacking up a lung by this point. Her frail body shook with each rasping cough, each one sounding wetter and wetter, congested and swollen.

"Nya!" I screamed as her head began to loll to the side. "Get up! Come on, get up!"

It was no use, Nya was completely paralyzed as she struggled to breathe. I could hear her lungs struggling to pass air through her throat, which had already started to close up - evidence of a huge allergic reaction. Blood vessels in Nya's eyes started to swell and pop, piercing the milky haze of her sclera and turning the corners of her eyes red. Sweat started to pour from her temples and the inside of her breathing mask was spattered with drool as she continued to cough herself raw.

She was dying before my eyes.

Her hands that gripped my shirt gradually relaxed as her muscles ceased to obey her commands, and tiny whimpers from her constricted throat were the only sounds she could make as unconsciousness slowly approached her. I yelled for help, for someone, anyone. I heaved her to her feet, but she was completely deadweight, seconds away from passing out.

"Focus, baby!" I begged as her eyelids fluttered shut. "Look at me. Come on, honey. Look at me now!"

There was a tiny flicker of movement in her right eyelid as the underside of her retina struggled to peer at me. I could hear a soft whisper try to escape Nya's lips but the noise turned into a final moan as she slumped against me. Her chest was pressed against me that I could feel her heartbeat grow fainter as the organ was failing to keep her alive.

Soft, soft pulsations. Quiet beats. Dimming and dimming. A morbid tempo. The tune of our end.

Her heart was going to stop in minutes. If that happened… I… god, I don't know. If I was too late…

" _Sagan!_ " I screamed as I kept holding on, refusing to let her drop to the ground. "I need you!"

The geth immediately responded and calmly stepped out in the middle of the hallway, taking out two more quarians with his superb aim before he sheathed his cannon so that he could come up to the two of us.

"Was Creator McLeod hit?" Sagan asked.

"No! Her mask slipped!"

The geth stared at my nearly suffocating wife for only a second before he gently took her in his arms to relieve me of her burden, cradling her body carefully as he effortlessly lifted her up off the ground.

"She needs medical attention," Sagan said. "We will head to the nearest hospital immediately."

I pushed against Sagan's side to get him to move. "Hurry! Hurry! Get her out of here!"

Preventing myself from falling into despair, I quickly grabbed the last ammo drum from my belt and slotted it into the shotgun. I then raked the slide back to load in a shell before I hurried from cover, firing away, almost with wild abandon, to clear the way to the door just seconds away.

I ignored the screams of bullets that hissed past my body. I lowered my body down as I peered down the iron sights of the shotgun. Each pull of the trigger was made with deliberation, with preciseness. Intricate mechanisms clicked against each other to deliver the deadly payload, to propel white-hot metal through the stale air to tear through flesh, blood, and bone.

I could smell the destruction and death, an iron taste at the back of my tongue.

In moments, the hall echoed with the last fiery ring of my shotgun's discharge. Bodies were crumpled on the ground in front of us, all quarian, leaking dark blood from holes in their suits. I stepped over the corpses and hit the door lock so that we could access the landing pad. A quick peek outside showed that no one else was waiting for us out there - only a lone skycar sat upon the pad, awaiting our presence dutifully.

I fell behind to cover our exit while Chandler went across the pad first, followed by Rie, then Sagan as he was carrying Nya. I watched them scamper across the pad and get safely into the skycar before I was about to step out of the building and across the catwalk, seconds away from following.

" _I told you that I could still hurt you, Sam!"_ a rasping voice suddenly bellowed from behind me.

All lighting seemed to take on a queasy shape as my brain registered the harmonics and tone of the voice that had reached my ears. Suddenly, it took a lifetime for me to turn around, the balls of my feet squealing on slightly scuffed plastisteel as I made to drop to a knee. The shotgun in my hand, the grips slightly slippery with my sweat, felt like several pounds had been added to its weight. It hurt my lungs to breathe and darkness was starting to creep up upon the top of my vision as if I was abruptly consumed with the desire to fall asleep.

I had no words to exchange with Eyzn as I managed to catch his outline peeking around the corner from where the elevator bay was located. In his hands, he held a military-issue rifle, long barrel for precision shooting. Next to him was a face that I had not seen in a while: Sievra. Eyzn's asari bitch. Where the hell had _she_ been this whole time? Sievra was armed to the teeth, decked out in a shiny, black armor with biotic energy rippling all around her. The asari glowed with power and she smiled as she darted to the other side of the hall, time and space beginning to warp around her fist as she readied a biotic attack.

 _Kill them_ , a little voice in my head whispered.

With pleasure.

My fingers clenched so hard onto the shotgun that I thought the housing would crack, I began roaring a wordless note as I set the gun to fire on full auto. Powerful blast after blast rebounded into my shoulder as my continuous pull of the trigger partially blinded me with yellow-white flares that emitted from the barrel. My ears cried for respite. A sulfuric tang in the air tickled my nostrils.

The bloodlust began to consume me.

Eyzn had to duck behind the corner as I tore up the walls with my constant rate of fire, surprised by the ferocity of my retort. Dust and chunks of metal and drywall spewed into the air, creating a billowing cloud that partially obscured my line of fire. Shell after shell after shell was ejected and flung far away from me, each red casing trailing a fine line of smoke.

 _I killed Vahl_ , I wanted to shout. _Now I'll kill you._

The shotgun's crackling blasts kept up, each individual ball of buckshot yearning to sink into Eyzn's body as it seared forward. I imagined this whirlwind of metal and fire tearing the bastard apart in a bloody haze, separating him into a million pieces after what he did to me… after what he did to _us_. I would no longer suffer at his hands without sending his anger back upon him tenfold.

I could have stayed in this position forever.

But behind me, I heard a voice cry out.

"Sam!" It was Rie. "We need to leave! We have no time!"

I ignored her initially and kept Eyzn pinned down with my never-ending fire. This motherfucker had kept me locked up for four months, tortured me with his diabotical tools, tried to mentally break me, and kept me away from my family! And now I finally had the means to end him right here, once and for all! How could I walk away from this now?

"Nya's dying!" Rie distantly pleaded, desperate for us to escape the encroaching violence. "Sam, she'll _die!_ "

"Nya…" I softly whispered as my finger eased off the trigger, ending the incessant assault on my senses, lifting the punishing recoil from the growing bruises on my shoulders.

 _Your wife… or your enemy. It's time for you to decide._

As if I could honestly make a choice to the contrary.

With a yowl of frustration, I shot back to my feet, turning away from the area that I had been devastating, and began to sprint in the opposite direction, away from Eyzn. I hurtled out into the cool air, tramping upon the catwalk to the landing pad. But because I had lifted my attention away from my foes, finally giving them room to breathe now that I was no longer firing upon them, Sievra was allowed to finally step into view, her fist still curling with azure light, and she shot her arm out, hurtling a spear of pointed biotic energy my way.

The wave slammed me on the back and gave an explosive ripple. It felt like I had been hit with a freight train. I flew through the air before I hit the deck hard and my shotgun bounced out of my grip and slid off the side of the pad, now tumbling a hundred stories down to the bottom of the Citadel. The air had been knocked out of me and my chest was aching something fierce, but I was miraculously able to turn on my back and yank a pistol from the holster at my side so that I could level an entire clip's worth towards the doorway, where the asari that had temporarily pinned me was residing.

Sievra darted out of sight in response to my quick reaction, easily evading the shots, but it gave Chandler the opportunity to step out of the skycar and to drag me back in it, all while I was trying to manage the savage recoil the pistol imparted on my wrists. The gun clicked on empty as the last thermal clip automatically ejected from the housing, just in time as the skycar's canopy tilted downward and sealed all five of us inside.

Through the darkened glass of the skycar, I was able to see Eyzn and Sievra attempt to burst in on the scene but the transport's engines flared to life and suddenly we were shooting away, rejoining the main traffic lanes in seconds. Sagan sat at the controls of the craft, monitoring our progress to the nearest hospital, which was Huerta, while I clambered over to the back to check in on Nya.

Bleary and on the cusp of passing out, Nya continued to cough pathetically. I held her head in my lap and whispered for her to keep holding on.

Deathly silent, Nya did not respond.

* * *

The ten minutes that it took for us to reach the hospital felt more like ten hours. I was on the verge of having a complete freak-out in the backseat the whole time because I was cradling my wife's body, helpless to her plight, and could only watch her suffer and know that her condition was deteriorating more and more with each passing second. I know that we were travelling as fast as we possibly could to get Nya to safety… but somehow I knew that it was not fast enough.

By the time we landed, we had immediately seized a stretcher to frantically place Nya upon it so that we could wheel her down the hall. All she could see, eyes washing in out of focus, as we travelled along were the rectangular light fixtures streaming over her head, fixated to the ceiling. We had to shout for everyone to make a path as we hurtled down the corridors of sterile steel and glass, sometimes having to push some oblivious people out of the way. I even knocked down a poor fellow who had been too slow to react, but I was too distressed to even slow down to apologize.

A white felt blanket covered Nya's body, leaving only her head exposed. Many passerby would be unable to tell that we were wheeling an unsuited quarian unless they looked hard enough. Nya had ceased coughing by now, which served only to panic me further. I had to keep her breathing. I needed to clear her airway.

Just then, Nya's body began to spasm on the stretcher as we rolled her along. She started making grunting noises and her limbs jolted in erratic movements. Nya gurgled, her eyes now rolling up into the back of her head.

"She's going into seizures!" Rie cried in alarm.

"Get the fuck out of the way!" I screamed at the growing throng of people before I yanked the stretcher to the right and into the Operating wing.

There were only doctors occupying this part of the hospital, and since most of the faculty here knew me and Rie, we weren't questioned as we practically sped down the hall in search of an empty room. After wasting another minute of fruitlessly searching, we finally found an unoccupied operating room, fully stocked with the items we needed.

Nya was still in her seizures as we wheeled her stretcher into the middle of the room. I had to go and grab a couple straps to tie her down after pulling the blanket off her so that she wouldn't fall off onto the floor. She didn't seem to have any notion of time and place anymore - her brain was slowly shutting down as she was being starved of oxygen.

"IV, IV," I ordered as I kicked the activation switch for the OR to whir to life. Holographic orange screens blinked into existence, suspended in mid-air, and robotic arms from the ceiling calmly whirred downward, presenting an entire suite of equipment for me to access.

Surgical lights dipped downward and focused on Nya, bathing her in hot light. The inflatable mattress on the stretcher began to puff out, providing comfort. Instrument trays slid out from slots in the walls. X-ray viewing boxes popped up and ignited. Anesthesia and dialysis machines rolled toward where Nya was positioned, their power systems already activated. The holo-screens now hovered over Nya's body, displaying to me her body temperature, detected humidity, plenum, ECG, SpO2, NIBP, heart rate, and respiration. The monitors had all the traditional visual displays that rendered several body processes in waveform format - all without the use of diodes. Infrared and UV lasers were used to obtain Nya's body information without needing any direct machine contact. State of the art equipment at my disposal and none of it was helping her live!

The news was not good. Nya's heart rate was dropping like a rock, nearly in free fall. Her respiration was a flat line, barely spiking. Even her brain waves were deathly still, almost no activity.

Rie finally passed me the IV tubing as she wheeled over the patient warming machine. As she was hooking up the main heat pipe to the underside of the stretcher, I reset the thin IV tubing into the port on Nya's hand. A thick trickle of blood dribbled down the back of Nya's hand, where I had reset the IV, which I wiped away. Sagan and Chandler stood at the back of the room, unsure of what to do, knowing that they would be useless in this situation.

"Give her gas," I told Rie, who immediately connected a tube to Nya's breathing mask into a port on one of the machines. Oxygen started flowing right about the same time as I had finished hanging up an IV bag and we both watched as a clear line of fluid - saline solution mixed with epi and vasopressin - started to snake down the tubing right into Nya's body. The medicine in the IV was dextro-compatible and should help diminish the effects of Nya's allergic reaction.

There was still no response from Nya. Her seizures had quelled, substituted instead for stillness. Her eyes were closed, not moving.

Coldly, I resisted the urge to cry out in denial. I had to keep moving, for her sake. I still had time.

"Heart rate?" I called as I felt for a pulse. It was still there, albeit weak. "Rie?"

"38 beats per minute," Rie said rather worryingly as she was unable to tear her eyes from the holo-screens. "No… it's escalating. 45 beats per minute. Now 52. Back down to 49. Now 29. Shit, she's in arrhythmia!"

"I just lost the pulse. She needs to be defib-ed!" I roared. While Rie scrambled to bring the defibrillator over, I plucked a pair of surgical scissors up from the nearby tool tray and positioned them at the collar of Nya's shirt. "Sorry, honey."

With a few snips and quick tugs, the tank top was torn in half and fell apart on either side of Nya's body. Chandler, even though he was quite some distance from the action, turned away in embarrassment once he realized that he could see Nya's bare chest. I had no choice - my mental disposition was not allowing me to be swayed by the unemotional nudity - because a defib had to be applied to bare skin. If the defibrillator's paddles made contact with clothing while it was going off, it would cause them to catch on fire.

"Hurry up!" I yelled at Rie, who was nearly done prepping the machine. To Nya, I stroked her cheek, finding to my shock that she was starting to cool down. "Be brave, baby," I whispered gently to her. "This isn't the end. You have to come back, now."

Rie handed me the paddles and I firmly placed them on Nya's bare skin, mushing the conducting gel against her in preparation for the electric shock, measuring the distance between the paddles in my head in confirmation that I was getting the procedure right. I could not recall giving Rie the order to flip the switch for the defib to begin detecting the existing pulse after I yelled for everyone to get clear because all I could focus on was the peaceful face of my wife, and how the air was filled with the acrid scent of raw hamburger and steel and how there had to be thousands of credits worth of epi and vasopressin spilled on the floor from my haste and that Nya's stupid fucking heartbeat was dipping lower and lower tauntingly and-

There was a low thrum and Nya's body subtly jerked - her muscles reacting to the gigantic charge that just gone through her. The defibrillator had recognized specific components of the electrocardiogram in preparation to go off, delivering its massive charge into Nya's body.

"Status!" I barked, nearly unable to voice the word due to how badly my throat was trembling.

Rie looked tearful as she analyzed the screens. "No… no pulse, Sam. There's no heartbeat detected."

" _Circulatory failure,_ " the machine blared as well, dispassionately. " _Circulatory failure._ "

I looked down at Nya and back up at the screens before I threw the paddles of the defibrillator away in a rage. The thing was useless to me now. I could not shock Nya again because two shocks in such a small window would do more harm than good. Also, using a defibrillator on a stopped heart did absolutely nothing - you couldn't bring someone back that way.

Kicking aside the equipment that blocked my way, I surged over to the stretcher, yanked off Nya's oxygen mask, and placed my hands firmly on her sternum. I then locked my elbows and began doing firm compressions on her chest. My arms pushed down the bone of Nya's ribcage a couple inches with each compression in a sickening see-saw motion. Nya's limp eyelids partially opened, but not of her own accord. She stared blankly up at me while I continued to pump away at her, each compression jerking her body into the stretcher.

"Please, Nya," I muttered in between compressions, silently counting to 30 in my head. "You can fight this out. You wouldn't just give up. Please."

She did not respond to me as I kept up my CPR. A tingling notion urged me to frantically speed up, but I quashed that over and over, refusing to give into panic and make things worse. I stopped the compressions after I reached 30 and I lowered my head to her chest to pick up a heartbeat.

Still, there was nothing.

" _Circulatory failure. Circulatory failure."_

"Nya… you can do it," I urged her as I began my compressions again, foregoing the artificial ventilation step. "You can't go… people are here for you. _I'm_ here for you. Wake up, baby. Wake up."

The compressions continued in earnest and I tore off my jacket in the middle of the set, scarred arms pushing down upon Nya's chest now. Rie hung back anxiously, hand at her mouth as she watched me with a sense of lingering dread.

"Sam…" she tried to speak.

"Shut up," I dismissed her as I kept pushing.

The amount of force I was exerting on Nya's chest was producing a fair amount of stress. This was only confirmed when there was a sickening crack that emitted from her body - it suddenly felt a little bit easier pushing on her now and that was when I realized that I had broken at least one of Nya's ribs.

"Aw, Jesus," Chandler moaned from the back.

I bit my lip, anguished at what I was doing, but I did not stop compressing, even now that I had to drown out this hideous scraping noise of Nya's snapped ribs grinding against one another. The intense smells of sterile-ness and spilled fluids bit at my nose, the unwavering lighting raged upon my eyes, and my throat too began to clog up as the air in this room failed to nourish me with each gulp.

" _Circulatory failure. Circulatory failure. Circulatory failure."_

It had been almost a minute since the alarms had gone off. A whole minute.

Most people couldn't last that long without a working heart.

"I… just… need… to…" I stammered as I kept on up with the compressions, defying all logic and reason as I kept on trying to induce Nya's heart, to have her start to breathe again.

I just needed her to take a breath. One breath. One… simple… little… breath.

Rie rushed over to me and tenderly grabbed my shoulders as she started to pull me away from Nya's body. I resisted, trying to shake her off, but she was determined and steadfast.

"Sam," Rie mournfully pleaded. "Sam, please. You have to stop."

"No!" I shook my head in a delirious, hectic manner. "No, Rie! Just a few more seconds! I just need a few more-,"

"Sam… it's too late. You can't do any more for her."

Rie's dry, roughened fingers slowly pried me off Nya, the last lingering touch was my palm upon her cold and clammy skin. The machines kept up their incessant shouting, now blinking red lights across the board as they reveled in displaying my failure.

"Nya's gone," Rie whispered as she held herself tightly against me, ready to catch me in case I collapsed.

I could only stare at my wife's still face.

" _Circulatory failure_ ," the machines howled. " _Circulatory failure_."

* * *

 **A/N: The last scene in this chapter was influenced by a swath of ever-present commentators mocking the improper portrayal of CPR in movies. I figured that I should give it a shot here and see if I could put my own spin on it. Hopefully (in case there are any doctors reading) I did a passable job of it.**

 **Again, a big thank you to everyone who has followed this story up to this point. (But please, put those pitchforks down! The story's not over yet!)**

 **Playlist:**

 **Home Videos: "A Way of Life" by Hans Zimmer from the film _The Last Samurai_. (In my opinion, this is Zimmer's most complete and very best score. Forget Batman, Inception, etc. This is the real deal.)**

 **The Gang Prepares/Nya Is Vulnerable: "Tank Battle" by Lorne Balfe from the film _Ghost in the Shell_**

 **Hallway Assault: "The Mutiny" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_**

 **Eyzn's Arrival: "Leap of Faith" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Assassin's Creed_**

 **CPR: "Fury" by Henry Jackman, Matthew Margeson, and Al Clay from the film _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_**


	19. Chapter 16: Hypothermia

My world crumbled around me. I was still standing stoic as the devastation ravaged everywhere I touched. My ears were ringing, drowning out all noise. My throat was bone-dry. I ached all over.

It felt like I was half-dead. Like part of my body refused to obey my commands. I was almost listless, perceiving only the staggered heartbeat in my chest as it shook me from head to toe.

Half-dead, completely dead. What was the difference anymore? Death surrounded me in its entirety, why shout I try to rationalize it any further?

The most grievous of blows had been set upon me, finally. It seemed like I was cursed to look upon the bodies of those I loved forever - a subtle taunt of life's grand design. How else could it be described to me? Over thirty years – a youngster in the chronological sense – and to have this burden upon me… such anger and sorrow indescribable was in the midst of destroying me yet again.

The trauma set upon me, rooting me to the spot, stealing my voice. Words could not be uttered to convey my misery.

I could only stare at my wife's dead face.

Her peaceful and still expression was the rigored face that would define my failure forever.

Yet again… my memory was whisked to that nameless place, that open field of consciousness where I could peruse the rows of thought at my leisure – the infinite library of my mind. My brain led myself to the section I had tried time and again to lock away, only to have it open all on its own, my efforts fruitless in the wake of the agony.

The door to my mental catacomb swept open eagerly, ready to display the shelves upon shelves occupied by the people I've had to watch go over the years.

Nya would be another name to add to the list of people I've lost. There had been so many… I had thought this part of my life had finally run its course - what a naive sentiment it was. Taylor… my unnamed daughter… and now my wife. Taylor had been the first, the driving catalyst of my definition as a person – I could still remember the time I had found her body in the hills above Carmel, crumpled and lifeless near a barbed-wire fence while the dying sun cast an orange glow over me, turning the mountains to fire. My sister had been good, kind, a delightful person to be around and a cruel and ignominious fate awaited her in the end, her life still undefined and robbed of its true potential. It was so unfair that she had to have been taken before her time.

Then there was my daughter. Another example of unfairness. Why did she have to go only a week after she had been born? Where was the righteousness in that? People like Eyzn could sojourn among us freely while innocent babies die in their sleep. Bad guys get to walk with a grin on their face whereas my wife had to hold her lifeless daughter in her arms, sobbing her eyes out.

Where was the justice in all this?

But now, I was the one holding my wife. The cycle kept revolving around me and now it had finally taken everyone I had ever cared about, everyone I had strongly loved. The people that had made me the happiest I've ever been were all gone now, ripped from my grasp.

And there was nothing I could do to bring them back.

The invisible knife at my heart crept forward.

* * *

"Come on, Sam," I heard Rie urge as she grabbed at my shoulders, pulling me away from Nya. "Please… let's go."

I felt my hands slide off of Nya's chest, my compressions finished, but I was not the one controlling them anymore. Nya's skin shone with cold perspiration, never to be warmed again. I stumbled back a step, fully guided by Rie as she led me away from the gurney, inch by inch.

It looked like Nya was sleeping. If I could just imagine it… she could very well be sleeping! She looked so tranquil right now. So serene. One would think that she was still alive.

"I tried to stop it…" I mumbled, my eyes locked onto my wife's body. "I tried, Rie… I tried… I tried…"

"There was nothing you could have done," Rie whispered into my ear. "We all fought… we couldn't have done any more."

"Could we?" I uttered as Nya's image grew smaller. "Could we?"

Rie had managed to lead me almost to the point where all the trays containing the surgical tools resided, an invisible barrier marking the spot for me to finally concede. My heel scraped along this line… then the rest of my foot followed. Only my last foot needed to cross now.

But fire suddenly screamed through my insides, churning the icy cold wake that had crept into my system. I yelled in panic and shoved Rie away, knocking her over to the side, as I rushed back over to where Nya lay. _No!_ There was still so much more to do! My hands returned to Nya's sternum and I started to perform my compressions once more, picking up from where I had left off before as I wheezed desperately, strings of drool starting to stream down the sides of my mouth while my arms burned. In the corner of my eye, I saw Chandler and Sagan stay frozen in their places, unsure of what to do. Rie, meanwhile, was picking herself up and running over to me.

"Sam-," she started to beg, but I would have none of it.

"No!" I shouted as sweat began to drip off my nose, each forceful push producing a grunt from me. "I… I need to… I need to keep her alive. I can't stop, Rie… I can't stop!"

"But it's too late!"

" _Fuck you!_ " I screamed but I did not cease my CPR. "Fuck you for saying that!"

Rie recoiled, hurt by my savagery. "She's _gone_ , Sam."

I didn't respond for a few seconds because I was throwing everything into pumping away at Nya's chest. My hands pressed down firmly on every second and I managed to ignore the vibrations of broken ribs scraping across one another. I just had to focus on one problem at a time.

"I… can… _save_ … her!" I growled in between compressions. Tears were poised at my eyes but I refused to let them fall, knowing that if I were to be blinded by grief, it would all be over.

"Sam…" Rie continued to protest, but her words fell on deaf ears.

"Get the thermal blankets!" I directed, now not even facing Rie, refusing to listen to her version of reason. When she did not respond, I wrenched my head around while Nya's stomach swelled from my compressions. "Do it _now_ , Rie! Move your feet! Get the thermal blankets!"

Rie looked like she was about to tearfully argue with me some more, but she was so startled at my vitriol that she soon stumbled over herself as she clumsily began to follow my orders, even if she did not know why she was obeying me. Rie practically sprinted over to the large cabinets at the side of the OR and hurled every object out of them from floor cleaning solution bottles to toothbrushes before she finally pulled out a stack of heavy, red and blue patched blankets. Yellow eyes fraught with panic, Rie slammed the blankets on the tray next to me, wondering what the next step was going to be.

"Go and activate the freezer for a fifteen-second run," I barked and Rie scurried off to the corner where a large contraption resided, almost as large as an MRI machine, while I hurriedly threw the blankets over Nya, one over her feet and legs, and another over her torso with minimal interruptions in Nya's CPR. "If you're listening, baby…" I whispered to Nya, "I'm doing everything I can. I haven't given up. Help me fight this, _please_."

The SZ Patient Cooling System, sometimes referred to in medical jargon as "cryo" or "the freezer," was a device designed to induce hypothermia in patients with dangerously unstable body temperature levels. A large and unwieldy device, it needed to be built in a bulky state in order for the fabrication to house the complex machinery that could lower a person's body temperature down to freezing temperatures in under a minute, although such settings weren't exactly recommended unless as a last resort. Right now, Rie was frantically pummeling away at the control panel, readying the freezer to receive a new patient so that it could begin to perform operations as soon as possible.

It seemed that Rie, at least, had deciphered my intentions, but Chandler was still bewildered as he saw the two of us start to wheel Nya over to the device while I was keeping up my compressions.

"I don't understand," Chandler said as Rie and I slid Nya's stretcher into the freezer before shutting the door. "How's this going to help revive Nya?"

It was a miracle that I was acting so calm right now. I had sunken completely into my formal, procedural mindset for this. Nya was not my wife anymore – she was just another patient. But that made this all the more decisive, more important. I could not lose her now – she deserved to keep on living!

"We need to induce a heartbeat," I explained as Rie hit the switch to start the freezing process. The cooling system began to emit a loud, whirring noise as its generators started to spool up. Frost began to cover the small porthole that allowed me to look in on Nya's body. Just fifteen seconds of this… it was going to be tight. "Nya's heart's been stopped for a minute and a half at this point. We can't reactivate it using normal means. CPR is not going to work for a full cardiac arrest. Therefore, we have to try more _drastic_ measures."

"A freezer?" Chandler gestured to the contraption, which was blinking a huge array of warning lights by now. "You call _this_ drastic?!"

"It's the only way we've got!" I wrung my hands, trying to stop them from shaking in my nervousness. "At lower temperatures, blood thickens and the capillaries constrict. Blood flow capability is drastically reduced. If we can lower Nya's body temperature to a certain level then quickly raise it back up again to normal, it should force the blood to thin out and the capillaries to begin to open up. The blankets help disperse the temperature variance – she shouldn't get damaged at all from this exposure - and they have the capability to heat themselves up so that she won't be in any risk of getting frostbite. The theory is that when she begins to thaw out, the thinner blood will have the tendency to begin to flow through the widened passageways since there is going to be considerably less resistance against it. If we can induce blood flow, we can start Nya's heart."

The freezer dinged as it indicated that it had completed its cycle. Rie and I rushed over to get Nya out of there. There was a loud sucking noise and the port to the machine opened, sending a few wisps of ice-cold air billowing out under the lights to evaporate in the stale atmosphere of the room. Frost particles coated Nya's eyelashes and her skin was deathly cold. Her gray skin had taken on an even paler tone and she looked to be in quite bad shape.

Still undeterred, I resumed my CPR on Nya while Rie used her omni-tools to activate the thermal blankets that were encasing my wife. Bundles of micro-fiber embedded in the blankets began to warm on command and soon the thick fabric was agonizingly hot to the touch. The blankets, wrapping around Nya like a burrito, quickly dispelled the chill around her to the point where my hands were starting to feel burned as I continued my compressions through the blankets.

" _Circulatory failure_ ," the monitoring machines still squawked, resuming their impassioned declarations. " _Circulatory failure_."

I tried to shut the distracting noises out while I continued to work away at Nya while her body steadily rose in temperature. The tiny bits of frost that had accumulated on her face from the freezer had melted by now and ran down the sides of her face, making it look like she was crying.

"I know you can hear me," I gasped as I continued to push. "You've been away long enough. Wake up, Nya. It's time to come back now."

" _Circulatory failure. Circulatory failure."_

Rie hung back, aghast. Chandler bit his fingers in anxiety. Sagan simply watched, knowing that there was nothing he could do.

Inanely, my head was playing the tune to a popular song to the tempo of my compressions. It wasn't mania on my part – it was a legitimate rule of thumb for timing the CPR. It still seemed so out of place to be thinking of something like that as I kept working at Nya, trying to bring her back. I still dispersed with the rescue breaths since it had been long proven that they do not help with resuscitation whatsoever. I refused to cry, but my throat was locking up something fierce as each precious second slipped away from me.

There would have to be a point where I had to stop.

"Come on, Nya…" I moaned as I pushed. "Help me out here."

My hands made a stronger push down on Nya's chest and there was another shuddering sensation, followed by a crack. That was another rib broken.

"Shit," I heard Rie whisper behind me.

Chemicals in the attached IV line lazily dripped down. Nya's skin became flush with heat. Warm blood now resided in her veins… yet she was still not yet breathing.

" _Circulatory failure. Circulatory failure."_

I was now sweltering, even in this frigid room, but I did not dare interrupt the process for a single moment to wipe my forehead. "How many times have I come back for you, huh?" I spoke in a hushed, loving tone to my wife as I worked, a bead of sweat dribbling down my face. "I practically died to get back to you – all _for_ you! I'm not leaving you. It wouldn't be fair! Work your way to my voice, baby. I made this mess, it was all my fault, but I'm going to fix it. I'll fix _all_ of it. But I need you next to me, Nya. I _need_ you. _Please_."

Numbers on the holographic screens flashed in a cluttered frenzy, all disregarded by me. I compressed in my firm, yet delicate, manner, trying to ignore the clock that was showing me that it now had been almost two and half minutes since Nya's heart had stopped. God, the blankets were burning my hands! It was like blisters were threatening to pop up on my palms. Waves of heat rose up my arms, prickling the hairs there. My shirt, soaked in my sweat, clung to my chest. I began openly gasping as I continued.

"Nya…"

" _Circulatory failure_."

"…please…"

" _Circulatory failure_."

"…wake…"

" _Circulatory failure_."

"… _UP!_ "

I howled as I made one, final push… and then I felt something vibrate in Nya's body below.

A tap.

No… a little tapping.

A sequence.

Unceasing.

Flowing.

That was when I realized the alarms had stopped blaring.

I opened my eyes and I saw life bloom before me.

A long, low exhalation, almost like it had come from a deep pit, emitted below me. I felt a waft of air and I nearly began sobbing as I saw Nya's chest slightly rising and falling, her mouth opening and closing as she was breathing on her own. Immediately, I lifted my hands off of her and covered my mouth in a mixture of relief and astonishment. Basically every single intense emotion jolted through me like lightning. I hardly dared to believe what I was seeing.

Incredibly… Nya was alive.

Rie began crying gratefully behind me. Chandler began laughing hysterically, now allowed some emotional respite. Even Sagan's posture seemed to be a little relaxed now that he realized that Nya was safe and no longer in any danger.

Remembering the procedure suddenly, I reached forward and ripped the thermal blankets off of Nya – they were of no use anymore and had served their purpose. The increased rate of blood flow due to the temperature increase had successfully jump-started Nya's heart and her circulatory system was gradually returning to normal, or so the system was telling me.

Nya caught my eye through her shallow breaths, her head shaking from all the trauma, and she gave as best of a smile as she could through open lips, while she was gasping for breath. It looked like she was trying to form words when suddenly she made a face and coughed.

That had to hurt, because Nya's face immediately scrunched up in pain and she clutched at her chest. She coughed again and this time made a tiny sound as it must have felt like something was stabbing her inside her chest. That would have to be the ribs that I had snapped – a frightening but unfortunately necessary consequence.

Before I could apologize, Nya managed to break from her coughing as she struggled to take in air. " _Owwwwww_ ," she moaned pitifully. "Ow. Ow. Ow. I… I think you broke something."

I hiccoughed at hearing her voice and had to grab at the side of her gurney for support. I wiped tears from my face and could only chuckle at seeing my wife alive again. However, I did notice that I was starting to lose all feeling in my legs and I quickly understood what was happening to me. Actually, there was this tingling sensation in my extremities… and now my vision was starting to turn various shades of gray. Had I not been holding onto the stretcher, I would be swaying dangerously on the spot.

For the second time in a few days, the intensity of my adventures were taking their toll on me.

"I'm going to faint again," I announced to no one in particular, right before my legs gave out.

My head bent slightly forward and my eye socket caught one of the arm rests as I fell, immediately giving me a black eye and providing me with a nice dose of pain to mull over as I collapsed onto the cold tile floor, completely knocked out.

* * *

I can definitely attest that things were in a much calmer state hours later. Make no mistake, those ten or so minutes that I spent in that operating room had to be the most stressful ten minutes of my entire life. My body was absolutely spent and wanted nothing more than to just nap to my heart's content, thus the fact that I had fainted again.

Nya and I (still unconscious) had been safely wheeled to a recovery room on the other side of the hospital, all without sparking another incident. The room was clean, sterilized to support unmasked quarians, and was well-supplied. It had a bed that overlooked the green trellises of the Presidium down below past the picture windows (thickened to protect against gunshots). There was a separate shower and bath combination on the right side of the room, although the shower was a rather tight fit, big enough to only accommodate one person at the bare minimum, and a somewhat squishy couch positioned against the leftmost wall. The room had enough space to do moderate stretches, which was good in case Nya needed some physical therapy, and altogether I had to admit that her accommodations had quite a fair bit more amenities than I would have expected from a usual hospital room.

I had woken up about an hour after Nya and I had been settled into the room. I had pulled up a chair by Nya's bed, her hand clutched in mine, while I simultaneously held an ice pack up to my face to alleviate the pain from the black eye that I had received. Medi-gel would dissipate the bruise in minutes, but there was none to be found in the room and I was not leaving Nya's side anytime soon, not after what had happened. I was just going to have to bear my discomfort for the time being.

All things considered, Nya was not doing too badly for someone whose heart had been stopped for a couple minutes. She was bleary and complained of having headaches, but was trying to keep her pain to herself. It was hard to tell if Nya had accumulated any nerve damage in her brain from being out for so long, but that was a hurdle that we were going to have to cross once we reached that point. Still, I couldn't help but worry - a brain starved of oxygen would cause perfectly healthy tissue to die out very quickly and there was no way to tell until we tested directly for such a thing if Nya had accumulated irreparable damage. Such trauma could be temporary, but they could very well be permanent. We were just going to have to take things easy, to determine if Nya was going to be back to one hundred percent or not.

Rie had seen to it to inject Nya with medi-gel into her chest before she had moved her out of the OR, to fix the ribs that had been broken during CPR. The area was still a little tender for Nya, but at least whenever she coughed, it did not feel like someone was trying to disembowel her. She was still outside of her suit, completely unmasked, for she still lacked the strength to be able to put it on. Her enviro-suit lay draped over a nearby chair, the mechanisms of her helmet placed perfectly upon the seat, the crimson glass shining in our direction.

Naturally, Nya was quite sick from her little outing, but not deathly ill anymore. The allergic reaction had run its course and had been suppressed by a heavy anti-inflammatory cocktail that soothed the mass cells in her lungs and prevented them from being irritated any longer. Still, she was horribly congested (she had taken lozenges for that), kept trying to sniffle through clogged nostrils (nose drops as well), and she sneezed intermittently (and was doped up on cold medication). Suffice to say that she had never had an allergic reaction this bad before and was heavily paying the price.

Yet, despite all odds, she _was_ recuperating.

Nya hiccoughed and winced as she rubbed at her neck before she gave a thick swallow. She then gave a grateful gasp and slumped against the bed.

"How's the throat?" I asked, gripping Nya's hand a little tighter for reinforcement.

"Awful," Nya admitted. "But… nothing I can't handle. How's the eye?"

"Hurts like hell," I muttered as I pulled the ice pack away. I prodded the top of my eyelid to find that it was quite swollen and radiated a sickly heat. Groaning, I put the ice pack back.

The two of us carried on in silence for a bit, almost as if we were embarrassed to keep talking further.

Nya then stirred on her bed after a few minutes and bit tenderly on her lower lip in anticipation. "Do you want to talk about it, Sam? About… what just happened?"

"Not if you don't want to," I replied as I shut my eyes tiredly.

I felt Nya's hand clench tighter around mine as a shuffling sound meant that she was turning to face me. I reopened my eyes (well, the eye that wasn't covered by the ice pack) and, sure enough, found her expectant face searching my expressions.

"I never thanked you," she began.

"And you don't need to," I gave as tiny of a shake of my head as I could without drawing forth pain.

"Don't be magnanimous," Nya sighed. "Not now. I can't stand it. You… you brought me back, Sam. You had every reason to give up at so many points because I was so far gone… but you did it anyway. If I can't tell you how grateful I am… then what's the point?"

"The point is that I couldn't let you die. I didn't _want_ you to die. I saved you because I cared about you so much. What… what kind of a husband would I be if I were to do nothing?"

"Was that the only reason?" Nya bumped her eyebrows, expecting more from me. "You saved me simply out of a sense of familiar duty?"

I avoided her eyes, softly musing to myself. "No. There were more reasons than that." I sighed and leaned back into my chair, readjusting my grip with Nya's hand. "But I'm still unsure if those reasons have some truth to them. I'm still searching for the answer, if you get what I'm saying."

"I think I do," Nya nodded, "but… everything's been really weird for me lately that I can't think properly. I now have irreconcilable proof… firm evidence that has upended the perspectives of you that I've been entertaining for months. Don't you see, Sam? Weeks ago I thought you might not have cared about me at all, yet here we are – or, here _I_ am – finding myself in your debt. I can look upon you and see that man that I met in that alleyway all those years ago, selfless and proud. Are your actions those of a spiteful man? No. Where has my gratitude been the whole time? Nowhere, which is the point. I know you think it may be obvious, and unnecessary, but I need to say it: thank you."

I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from protesting, despite my urge to remain modest. There were times that I had yet to learn that Nya's stubbornness would always override my own. It was how things had always worked between us, to my amused detriment. She was never overtly obnoxious about this, and it was a trait that I respected between us. Strong willed, that woman.

"You're welcome," I finally acquiesced. This would make a good milestone in our healing process, I silently noted, trying my best not to seem over-the-moon at this upward trend.

At this point, where it almost seemed like it was a cliché in our lives, there was a soft beeping from the door that drew both of our attentions in that direction – an indication that we were about to receive some visitors. Instinctively, my hand tightened further upon Nya's, but we needn't have worried. It was just Rie, Chandler, and Sagan looking to check up on us. The beeping noise was actually from the filtration barrier that served as a kind of checkpoint between the door and the room – guests had to reside in this tight tube while air scrubbers proceeded to disinfect them for a ten-second cycle, to prevent Nya from inhaling any more contaminants that might come in from the hallway. After that, they were free to move on in, completely safe.

"How's it going, you two?" Chandler greeted as soon as the barrier slid open to allow access. He took a seat on the couch and gave a sympathetic smile.

Nya and I glanced at each other. "Okay, all things considered," I said as I set the ice pack down on a nearby table. "Superficial wounds on my end and I think Nya's on the mend – unless she'd like to say anything to the contrary – so I think that we're doing as well as we could."

"You guys aren't doing my heart any good. Nearly went into conniptions after seeing you two in the OR."

"Sorry," Nya shrugged with a cheeky grin. "I'll be sure to tighten my mask the next time."

Weak laughter resounded amongst us and Nya blushed. I suspect she was still getting used to the fact that a bunch of people were looking at her unmasked face with interest, but she was accumulating to it rather rapidly once she realized that people were just naturally curious and not being rude with their stares. They weren't staring to be mean, they were staring because they wanted to memorize their friend's features before she had to go behind a mask again. It was endearing, not a point of mockery.

Chandler gestured towards me. "Have you two talked… or…?"

"We've approached the topic," I said, meaning Nya's near-death experience. "Actually, I don't think we're all that comfortable discussing it in detail just yet. Too many bad memories lately."

"Yeah," Chandler's face suddenly turned morose. "Makes sense."

Immediately, I suspected that something was up between the three visitors (well, maybe not Sagan) and there was definitely a subtle shift in communication privately occurring between Chandler and Rie. My tongue bounced between my lower rows of teeth as I pondered.

I decided to go for broke. "You guys aren't really here for well-wishing, are you?"

It was Rie who answered first (with a sheepish look), "Erm… not really."

"Huh. So… what, then? Surely not to start a fantasy bioti-ball league between the four of us?"

No one was laughing at my poor jape and now Chandler and Rie were really looking on edge. Rie's hands were especially active as they twisted themselves into knots while Nya and I looked on in confusion for the time being.

"You see, Sam… we've been talking – I mean, Chandler and I – and we think that… well, because things between you two have been so fragile… it seems like-,"

"We're holding an intervention for you guys," Chandler interrupted, frustrated by Rie's stammering attempts to skirt around the topic.

Simultaneously, Nya and I threw up our hands in despair before reclining back for support.

"Are you serious?" Nya groaned.

"Come on, guys!" I grumbled in exasperation.

"This is ridiculous!"

"We don't need this!"

It was soon clear that our griping was getting us nowhere. After all, what were we going to do to get out of this? Leave? With Nya's bad immune system, that was an impossibility and I had literally just promised never to be away from her side, so that was clearly out. This was still a cheap move, bringing on an intervention while Nya couldn't even muster the strength to stand! I glowered at Rie and Chandler while my teeth ground against one another in frustration.

Rie seemed to gain a bit of a backbone as she adopted a steely guise before she shot an accusatory finger at the both of us. "I'll be damned if you're both going to get out of this. For almost a whole year – an entire, damned year – I've done nothing but sit in the background and watch the two of you nearly destroy yourselves. No longer! I'm not going to be content anymore with doing nothing!"

"Rie…" I placed my palm over my face. "You don't need to-"

"Shut up, Sam," Rie shot at me fiercely, her subharmonics doling out a growl. "I _do_ need to do this. You two… I'm just going to say it: you've been acting like children! The both of you have just been so… so _stupid!_ You've acted horribly to each other and you have no idea how much of a toll it's been on the rest of us! We've _agonized_ over you two, knowing that you were miserable."

Nya waved a hand to calm Rie down. "It's okay, Rie. It's okay. We're doing better now, really. This… you guys, this isn't really necessary. We know that we've been acting like idiots lately-,"

"Like idiots?" Chandler coughed in surprise. "From what I've heard, you two were _screaming_ at each other at multiple points. And, to be frank, I've been hearing stories that are far worse than just these yelling matches. Name calling, wild accusations, physical violence. At what point _should_ we be concerned? As your friends, we too have an obligation to help, you know."

"All you guys are doing are tearing up old wounds," I protested. "Look, Nya's right. We're doing much better now. We're working through this as best as we can and we're certainly not arguing with you over just how boorish we've been behaving. I'll admit it, I was not on my best behavior. Nor was Nya. We've addressed that part and confronted it. We're just trying to take things slower, to help the both of us using what little time we have. For that, I - _we_ \- sincerely apologize and we're going to make all of this up to you. We just need some time to help process what we're going to do next."

"But we…" Rie stood from her chair in excitement, her mandibles twitching. "We can do _more_ , Sam! You don't understand… we can help you guys better than you could imagine! Here, I'll show you!"

It seemed that this had been something that Rie had been wanting to say for quite a while, as evidenced from her agitated state. Eagerly, she opened up her omni-tool and began displaying a random assortment of files to us at a breakneck pace, flipping through each item so quickly and chattering so rapidly that Nya and I had to concentrate very hard upon what she was saying.

"I had found this in the Huerta WARC months and months ago and I never got the chance to show you guys," Rie was saying as her arms shook, shaking the images. "I've waited for so long for the perfect time and now I have you both in an agreeable mood. You'll never believe what I found. Look! Look there!"

Nya and I peered as best as we could upon the title of one such file that hovered over Rie's arm and my stomach immediately dropped upon reading the words " _Filename: McLeod, Unknown_."

My daughter's medical records.

They had been redacted, as evidenced from the black bars covering up nearly all of the text. Rie was grinning broadly like she had just discovered a gold mine, especially when she pointed to the header denoting that an autopsy had taken place on my daughter, contrary to public knowledge, that indicated that she had died due to one or some of her organs failing.

Nya looked astonished, especially at the mention of the autopsy. "Where exactly did you find this file, Rie?"

"It was right there in your family records, within the folder for your daughter. I was doing some research and I saw that this part of the file had not been modified, showing that there _was_ an autopsy. You guys told me that you never even ordered an autopsy, so I knew that something was amiss when I read this. I could not open the file because I didn't have the proper access, but since you're family, _you_ can open it! Don't you see? This file could provide the answer as to how your daughter _really_ died, in case it was not-,"

"Rie, stop," I sighed remorsefully as I hung my head in shame. "Just stop. Don't say another word."

Rie stuttered in place, like she had heard me wrong. "S-Stop? Why would I stop? Sam, don't you realize that this file could exonerate you?"

I pried my hand away from my head as I now waved my omni-tool across the file. "That's exactly why I buried it in the first place," I whispered.

Reacting to my personal code, the black bars covering up the file's text vanished in the blink of an eye, revealing the complete and unmodified form. Everyone's eyes then shot to the section denoting the autopsy's existence, including the section of who the authorizer had been.

 _Autopsy Authorized by: Samuel McLeod, OSM - March 3rd, 2189_

All eyes in the room turned to focus on me. Emotions from anguish to shock spread out across everyone, their eyes conveying their complete surprise on the matter.

" _Y-You_?" Rie uttered. "You ordered it?"

"I did," I said with confidence, not running from the truth this time. I tried not to look at Nya's face lest I would fall apart from the betrayal etched upon her features.

"But… then how...?"

"I've always known how she died," I explained tonelessly. "It had been her heart. That's all it was. Nothing that an infection could have possibly caused at all. I had gone for a nonintrusive autopsy the day after she had died, just to see if I had truly been at fault. There was no evidence that my daughter had been suffering from such an illness when the actual cause had been… more sudden. The official cause of death, an allergic reaction, which we put on the death certificate was actually a lie - _my_ lie. Our daughter had something… a genetic defect, perhaps… nothing that we could possibly counter against... in any case, her heart was simply not strong enough and… and one day it just _quit_. Kind of like how aging people's organs just shut down once they grow too old. We didn't identify the genetic marker that caused her death during the autopsy, just that it stopped beating one night. Completely painless for her. I just wanted the whole thing over and done with. Once the autopsy was finished I sealed the file, knowing that it would not help a thing."

Rie looked like she had just been punched. She slowly blinked, trying to decipher the logic of my actions. "I don't get it. Then… what the… why would you _bury_ the file in the first place, _knowing_ that it would take the blame off you, you stupid man?!"

"Because I thought it would make things worse!" I snapped. "Month after month _after month_ we checked the status of the pregnancy, to make sure that there would not be any complications! We went to the hospital… so many times… and not once did we ever get a glimpse of a possible heart condition in our child! This is something the prenatal scans should have picked up long before… yet the symptoms did not manifest until after birth. _After the birth!_ We had done everything right, we had gotten a clean bill of health, found no complications… and she died anyway!"

"But how does that justify what you did?" Rie asked.

I then gestured heavily over to Nya. "I knew that I could never make her believe it," I said through a tightened throat.

"I… I don't understand."

"Nya was inconsolable. She was crying herself to sleep every night. Losing our daughter nearly destroyed her. I ordered the autopsy in secret because Nya couldn't stand the thought of her baby being analyzed after death - she thought it was a desecration. I just wanted to know the truth… and when I found out that her weak heart had been the culprit, I decided to hide all the evidence and to fabricate a different cause of death, one that I figured to be a bit more… realistic."

"Realis-Realistic?" Rie gaped. "You _lied_ to Nya… all because you _thought_ that she wouldn't believe the truth?!"

"I didn't know exactly what she would think!" I said angrily, all too aware that Nya's bottom lip was quivering as I spoke. "But I knew how she would react to the lie! I didn't want to lose Nya to grief! We had such strong evidence that supported the fact that our child was going to grow up healthy… and yet when she died anyway, where could we direct our blame to? Revealing a genetic disorder as the cause would bring us no closure! I doubted that Nya would believe that our baby's heart had simply failed. If she did, then she would just blame herself and I would never get her back again because she would withdraw herself… and that wonderful spark in her eyes would not return. There had to be a scapegoat - someone within reach to place all this blame upon!"

Rie crept toward me, her mandibles flaring in agitation as she approached. "So… you deliberately lied because you thought that something worse might happen if you revealed the results of the autopsy? Was that really what was going through your head?"

I stuck my chin out, defiant. There would be no denials from me. "Yes. Yes it was."

It was evident that Rie was striving to control her base inhibitions as she tried to ponder the ramifications of what I had done. Her head was no doubt reeling from this revelation. Nya was probably in the same boat, but she was bearing her shock more quietly.

Seconds later, it became clear that Rie was utterly failing to rein in her instinctive reactions. That much was apparent when she suddenly slapped me in the face.

Nya let out a gasp.

Rie's carapaced hand against the skin of my cheek made a cracking sound and my head was whipped back a couple of inches. I staggered but quickly recovered, and touched my fingertips to the place where I had been struck, the affected area beginning to smart. I glared at Rie for a second, but softened my look when I realized that this was probably the least I had deserved, so I continued to bear my discomfort in accession.

"You _asshole_ ," Rie blurted, near tears. "How _could_ you?"

"You don't have to tell me that I screwed up," I said, keeping a hand over my afflicted cheek. "I know what I did."

Rie shook her head blindly. "Then that just makes everything worse! You didn't kill your daughter yet you still proceeded to destroy your relationship anyway! You could have saved yourself - _and_ Nya - so much pain if you only decided to _tell her the truth!_ "

Rie then turned on Nya with a whirl when I remained silent. "And _you!_ For months and months I've had to bite my tongue when it came to you two. I can't keep quiet any longer, not when my friends have acted like idiots for too long. Sam told me what you had said to him! You accused him of _murdering_ your child! What made you _say_ such a thing, Nya?! How could you possibly think that Sam could have deliberately killed your baby?! Did that ever make sense to you?! You loved him so much at one point - what could have possessed you to treat your own husband so badly?!"

Nya was now holding her head in her hands as she withered under Rie's scathing gaze. Her body was shaking with quiet sobs, utterly heartbroken and ashamed, and even I was starting to become a little uncomfortable at this, so I made to draw Rie's attention back to me.

"Ease up on her, Rie," I said. "She's only just found out about all this, you don't need to rub salt in the wound."

" _No!_ Not until I've said everything I've been aching to say for almost a year! I can't stand the fact that this rift between you two was completely unnecessary. It did not help anyone! You should have been straight with Nya and she should have treated you better! You're all lunatics! Every one of you!"

Rie was nearly shrieking, her eyes bugging out of her head in her flustered state. Chandler had to get up from his chair and gently guide her back to the sofa in order to calm her down. I kept my gaze to the floor, not bothering to argue with Rie in light of the truth. I sympathized with my friend - she was frustrated and rightfully so. I did not have to take responsibility for my daughter's death at all, most likely. Maybe it would have helped in the long run, maybe it would have made things worse.

Maybe… my choice had been the wrong one.

Sagan now stepped up after letting the organics speak first while Rie trembled on the couch as she struggled to calm herself down. "Our analysis has indicated that there is only a 0.133333% percent that the death of Samuel and Creator McLeod's child is attributable to Samuel alone. Even without the data from the autopsy indicating that the child's circulatory system was flawed, we have studied all of Samuel's interactions with his child while she was still alive. In every case, Samuel had taken every precaution to disinfect himself of contaminants so that his child would not succumb to a fatal reaction. In addition, if the child had started to develop a reaction, there would have been evidence beforehand. A runny nose, swelling of glands in the neck, a constricted airway. The child exhibited none of the usual symptoms of such a reaction before she expired."

Nya was trying to hold in her bawling as she rocked back and forth on the bed. It wasn't working, because her body was trembling horribly, almost as if she was in convulsions. The stress of the past couple days combined with this ill-timed intervention had finally taken their toll. A drained Nya was now completely spent.

"Everyone get out," I ordered coldly as I moved next to my wife. There were still many things we had to discuss together.

"Sam, I just wanted to-," Rie tried to say, but it was too late for her to be suddenly contrite.

"I said everyone get the fuck out!" I barked.

Shouting seemed to get the point across because in no time flat, everyone aside from me and Nya had vacated the room after shuffling over to the door. Rie had a slightly embarrassed look on her face, unsure if she had gone too far. I would have a talking-to with her in a moment, but there was a very important person that I needed to speak with, someone who would _always_ place first on my list.

I walked over to the sink and filled a glass with water. I then took this glass over to Nya, who was still struggling to rein in her agonizing grief.

"Here, drink something," I softly told her.

She shook her head haltingly, too stifled with sobs to speak. Undeterred, I pressed the glass into Nya's hand firmly.

"Nya…" I began, but she didn't allow me another word, for she suddenly grabbed at the glass and hurled it into the wall. Water exploded upon the wall with a high shattering sound and at the same time Nya unleashed a fearsome scream.

It was a primordial roar, a kind of wail that could only be achieved after having undergone so much abuse for so long. Nya's eyes were clenched shut as she screamed and she beat her fists upon the bed in frustration. The entire frame shook with her impacts and tears streamed in twin rivulets down her face.

This was the first time that I had seen Nya completely lose it. This was even beyond the time when we had lost our daughter. To top it all off, I have never seen Nya so distressed before in an unmasked state. It was hard to describe, but I could have sworn that her screams resonated within me as well. Her mouth was twisted in a cry of denial, formed from months of betrayal and anger. Her eyes dripped with tears, signifying her despair. So many emotions, all accrued from our experiences, were all now unleashed in one powerful utterance.

Nya's voice finally cracked as she ran out of breath. She inhaled but did not continue screaming. Her hands clutched at her ribs as she laboriously breathed, a wheezing noise soaked with horrific understanding.

"I'm a… I'm a mess," she croaked sullenly as she continued to hold herself, tears now falling onto the blankets, darkening them. "A complete… and total… mess. I don't know what's happening to me, Sam. I… hate how I'm acting. It seems like all I've been doing for the past few days is cry… and cry… and cry… _and cry! Stupid!_ " Nya grimaced as she viciously writhed on the bed as it looked like she was trying to tear out the armrests in her spasms.

"That's enough!" I said in alarm, but Nya wasn't listening.

" _Stupid, stupid, stupid_!" Nya cried. "I don't know what… how can I… _aaaagh! I hate this!_ I hate feeling like this! Lies upon lies upon lies! How could I have thought that you… didn't care?! Keelah… what is happening to me?!"

I lifted the armrest of the bed out of the way, the only thing separating the two of us, and pulled Nya closer so that I could clutch her against my body. Her head rested upon my chest and her arms immediately wrapped themselves around me, seeking an anchor point. I could feel her body continue to be wracked with her sobs, tiny coughs emitted from her as she was enveloped by my warm frame. Desperate, she pressed her cheek against me, her tears soaking into my shirt. I lowered my head against the top of Nya's head, noting the pleasant smell of her hair. Held in place from my hug, Nya had no choice but to gradually calm down, her sorrow dissipating in the wake of our shared heat.

I then felt muted bumps upon my chest as Nya weakly raised her arm and knocked her fist against me. Almost as if she was trying to punch me. Again, I said nothing. Better to let Nya vent out her frustration than interrupt this.

"You stupid… stupid… stupid idiot," she moaned. " _Stupid_ man."

A very apt description.

"I should have told you everything," I mumbled, my own voice hoarse. "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark."

"Yes, you should have told me," Nya shuddered. "You… _bosh'tet_. You _should_ have told me!"

"I don't expect you to forgive me. But I do hope that you understand why I thought I had to do this."

" _Why?_ " Nya broke away from me and wiped the tears off her face in frustration. "I know _exactly_ why. You think of me as fragile."

"No, that's not-,"

"You think that I somehow would not have been able to handle the truth."

"I was not saying that-,"

Nya then threw her arms out, shoving me back a step off the bed. "No, that _is_ what you were saying! So what _were_ you expecting, then?! It somehow got into your head that you felt that _lying_ to me for months was the right thing to do?! I caused _so much_ pain for the both of us because you didn't deign to tell me the truth! I would have understood then! I would have accepted that our baby died for reasons out of our control… but _no_ , you had to step up and shoulder all the blame yourself. You villainized yourself and made me hate you! I became a villain too because I then chose to push you away!"

I stared at the floor, finding it difficult to make eye contact with Nya. "If you had even seen yourself, Nya… if you realized just how vulnerable you were back then… maybe you would have had the same idea. I was terrified of losing you too and I believed, that with the knowledge of our daughter really died, there was a good chance that you would be forever lost to me if I had told you. Christ, Nya… people have committed _suicide_ over things less important than the death of a child. I was in that position a couple times - you know this - and if you remember, then you should empathize with the fact that I did not want you to fall down that path. _You did nothing wrong_ and I did not want you to live your life thinking that you were to blame. I would do anything and everything to bring you back… and if that meant putting a target on my back instead of on your own… then know that I did so without hesitation."

"But why did you let me think that you didn't care? You could have stopped me… warned me…"

"I _tried_. Believe me, I tried. I _loved_ our daughter, Nya. Being a parent was one of the proudest moments of my life. I had no idea that you would come to think that I would have deliberately hurt her - everything just spiraled out of my control faster than I could blink. But it was too late… I could not take back the lie. It grew far out of my reach and I could not reign it in. I just had to live with my mistake and the blind hope that someday… things might be better for the both of us."

Now Nya clutched at the hem of my shirt, pulling me back toward her. "And now?" she implored through shining eyes. "Do you still hope that we might have a future together?"

"Is that something that you still want? Even after what you just heard?"

Nya bit her lip but did not take her eyes off of me. "It is."

Sighing, I slid my hands into Nya's own before I sat back down on the edge of the bed, taking on a contemplative air. Her hands felt so smooth, so warm. They had been ice cold just hours ago. I then encased one of her hands with both of mine, as if her temperature were to somehow plummet right when I was next to her.

"I'm tired, Nya," I admitted. "Tired of fighting. Tired of this uncertainty. I just want to hold onto the people I have left in my life. I hate having to live every single day scared that I might lose you. I want us to be a family again. I… want you, Nya. I can only hope that… in time… you'll forgive me for what I did. You said before that you wanted to give us a shot. I very much want that… as long as you're with me until the very end, because I'll be right there alongside you the whole way."

Conflict is one of our bases natures that have followed all of us, human and quarian, from the beginning of time. It is our natural desire to fight, to war, to be otherwise opposed to the entities that convey different viewpoints, different opinions, a different code. Maybe things, if Nya and I had done certain prerequisites differently, would have panned out in worse ways. Perhaps we could not have found it within ourselves to sympathize, to forgive and end the destruction broiling within the two of us.

Yet the consciousness does not gravitate to conflict first and foremost. Like all things in nature it desires equilibrium. Time is the best healer of all wounds and conflict cannot be sustained in a vacuum.

Take away the fuel and the life of the fight is sucked out, like a fire being starved of air.

Right then and there, the fire that had separated Nya and me for so long vanished without a trace, while simultaneously a new pillar of warmth began to burgeon in the both of us.

Nya reached out and drew me close to her, nestling her head into the crook of my neck. Her tears had long been dry by now and she gave a murmuring sigh as she felt me in this close embrace - the first of which carried a subtle energy that jittered between us, our own emitted radioactivity.

Emotional fusion. Peace.

And…

...love.

Her lips nearing my ear, I heard her gentle voice proclaim her forgiveness.

Our hug tightened in joy.

* * *

I exited the room half an hour later with a tiny smile. Nya and I had spent the rest of our time in there simply chatting, taking advantage of this newfound optimism before it could be snuffed out. It was no surprise that Nya would soon be exhausted from talking, so I had helped tuck her into bed and left her alone in the room to give her some privacy so that she could have an undisturbed rest.

Lord knows she needed it.

I wasn't planning on going very far, maybe the commissary to grab a snack or something, but I was definitely planning on hanging near the entrance from now on, to protect Nya in case trouble came calling once again. Yet when I started to walk out of the room, in front of me Chandler and Rie rose from where they had been sitting on the cushioned benches, their faces petrified with apprehension and anticipation.

They asked me no questions as they approached, not that they needed to. Their expressions had their line of inquiries etched firmly upon them.

I lifted my hands slightly in a submissive move before I let my grin grow wider. "I think we're going to be okay," I said.

The faces of my friends immediately softened and they closed the gap to give me congratulatory hugs of their own, comforted that Nya and I had finally… _finally_ managed to see some sense.

Surrounded by the solace of my closest friends, I could finally relax.

At last… I could allow myself to feel relief.

* * *

 **A/N: I think, after this, I've used up my allotment of fake-out deaths in this story. Trust me, I have a few more twists in store that don't utilize that trope. There's still a decent chunk of story to go, but we are slowly but surely creeping toward the final act. I hope everyone's been enjoying the ride so far.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Sam Looks Over Nya's Body: "Choral Theme" by Craig Armstrong from the film _In Time_.**

 **Sam Revives Nya: "Supermarine" by Hans Zimmer from the film _Dunkirk_.**

 **Human and Quarian Reaffirm: "A Long Road Back" by James Horner from the film _Southpaw_.**


	20. Chapter 17: The Revealing Ablution

**A/N: FF has been experiencing a few issues lately that's interfering with story notifications for new chapters. The previous chapter released last week might have been affected by this partial outage, so if this next chapter is making no sense to you, then I'd recommend going back a chapter to get caught up if indeed that's the case. Just a heads up for you all.**

* * *

"Come on!" I urged as I clapped my hands in time to a steady beat. "Just a few more steps!"

Nya fixated her gaze upon me, sweat dripping from her brow, arms and legs shaking. The white patterned hospital gown that she wore over her body fluttered from her involuntary trembling. "I… can't…" she whined as she gasped for breath. "It's too… far…"

I stood at the other end of the parallel bars, right at the very point that I wanted Nya to stop at. The bars were set at an inch or two above Nya's waist height, locking her into a tight row, and her hands clutched at these bars as she struggled to keep her weight off her feet as much as possible, at least so that she could take tiny forward steps towards me. The parallel bars were a very useful therapy tool, simplistic but effective at helping in strength training, especially designed to help someone to regain their sense of balance as well as to assist relearning to walk correctly. This path was something that Nya desperately needed right now and she had thrown herself into the therapy with a reluctant grit.

But she still was not fully healed yet from her wounds. She needed a lot more time to recover.

And a lot of patience, most of all.

Parked at the halfway point of the bars, Nya wheezed as she bent her arms and started to lower her body to the floor as the muscles in her arms slowly weakened. She had nearly exhausted herself by holding herself up solely with her arms. Her legs folded underneath her, limp and unresponsive, unable to support her weight. Before she completely collapsed onto the ground, I swiftly headed over and lifted her back up, now taking her weight in an awkward embrace as Nya leaned heavily upon me.

"Damn… damn it," Nya coughed, sounding raspy. "I thought I could… do it… that time."

Hoisting Nya up as best as I could, her feet dragging below, I gave her a reassuring pat on the back to relax her. Her body was radiating heat and her face was clammy with sweat from her exertions.

"You're doing fine," I told her. "Just fine. Much better than I ever would have thought. You just need to keep at it, okay?"

I felt Nya's head slowly bob up and down in a somewhat hesitant nod, but even such a simple response was good enough for me.

"Did you want to stop with the bars?" I asked her. I didn't want to force her to wear herself up if she truly did not feel up to the task.

Still it seemed she had some life left in her. "No," Nya said as her breathing eased. "I'll come back to that later. More stretches, please."

"All right, hold tight on me, now. I'll help you over to the mat."

As slowly and as carefully as I could, I walked over from the parallel balancing bars to the soft and squishy stretching mat that had been laid down on the floor beside it. Nya's bare feet skimmed across the cold tile, her limber toes making futile movements to tread across the ground. I was doing most of the work holding onto Nya for her arms were nearly sapped of their strength. Such was the usual routine for the past day and a half, now, but I certainly was not begrudging her for being this way.

I had taken the initiative to requisition a bunch of equipment from the hospital over the past couple days so that I could place them all in Nya's room when she was ready for this next step: therapy. I knew it would be pointless to transfer Nya to a specialized room just to regain her natural strength again, the issues with her immune system notwithstanding, so I had decided to bring the equipment over to her. Nya's room was spacious enough to handle all the tools that I felt was necessary, which was a blessing in disguise, because Nya needed all the help we could get. In addition to the parallel bars and the floor mat that I had brought up, I had also procured a few leg weights, stretch bands, and I had even downloaded a few therapy demos for us to run through, just to make sure we were covering the basics. I was definitely not going to take any chances with my wife's healing process.

What a lot of people do not realize is that recovering from a stopped heartbeat is a much more complicated process than it is made out to be in the vids. People are not up and running within hours of getting a heartbeat back, whether it was gained from CPR or from some pharmacological substance. The fact of the matter is that when the heart stops pumping, blood stops flowing. When blood stops flowing, the brain gets starved of oxygen and the cells immediately start to die off. The longer your heart is stopped, the more damage gets accrued, and Nya's heart had been stopped for at least two minutes. The amount of damage is entirely dependent on many factors, so it was my goal with this therapy to help determine if Nya had gained any permanent nerve damage while she was out or if her state was only temporary.

So far, things seemed to be promising. She was certainly doing much better than she was yesterday, when she couldn't even muster the energy to lift a leg. Her average muscle strength was gradually returning every hour, more so when she set her mind to the exercises. She was weak, yes, but she was getting stronger - showing improvement.

Walking normally was where she was having some issues, though. It seemed that Nya's sense of balance and coordination was all shot to hell after her near-death experience. That aspect had been pinpointed immediately so it had been my goal to focus the brunt of the therapy upon Nya's muscles in her legs, to get them back to as close as a hundred percent as possible. From my experience and from the amount of therapy we had completed so far, it looked like that Nya might be able to walk unassisted in perhaps another day or two of intense training, but she might have a limp for the rest of her life. It was too soon to determine how severe the limp was going to pan out in the end. Such was the price she would pay for my foolishness.

First things first. We needed to take Nya's recovery one step at a time.

Now trodding onto the spongy mat, I ever so carefully bent my knees and lowered Nya onto it, back-first. She unconsciously smoothed out the gown that fell down to her knees, for that was all she was wearing at the moment. I ran through the next items in the itinerary in my head, trying to figure out the road map for the rest of the morning.

"You want the weights or stretching first?" I asked her.

Nya rubbed her chin thoughtfully, her eyes momentarily contemplating the ceiling. "Um… let's do some stretches." Nya hated the weights.

Nya then laid herself prostrate and I continued to adopt the guise of a therapist, even though I was not licensed for this sort of thing. But hell, I fix the damn tissues related to this sort of thing in my normal line of work and quite frankly, there wasn't anyone in this building well equipped to handle an unmasked quarian this way. In short, I was the only man for the job.

"All right, tell me when it starts hurting," I said in a disconnected tone as I began to lift Nya's right leg up, rotating it at the hip. I had gotten to about a seventy-degree angle when Nya suddenly started to slap her hand on the mat for a little leeway.

"Stop, stop, stop," she moaned as her teeth gritted against themselves. Flexibility was not great, then.

Listening, I stopped pushing Nya's leg forward, but I continued to hold it in its raised position. Nya's toes curled and I could feel the muscles of her calves tighten and strain as Nya was forced to accept the burning sensation in her hamstrings. Her fists clenched together and her brow furled in concentration momentarily, but it started to smooth as the pain started to become a bit more tolerable.

I held the leg up for ten more seconds before I lowered it down a few inches, producing a grateful gasp from Nya. I let her rest for a short while before I started stretching again, but this time I pushed a little farther than last time now that her hamstrings had adjusted to this new sensation. As before, Nya was faintly stirring as she lay on the mat, grunting and turning her head this way and that, but she was being such a good patient and not violently protesting my actions or needlessly hollering her head off.

This continued on for about another minute before I switched to the other leg. The entire process was then dutifully repeated, with Nya continuing to behave very well even as her legs would feel weird and rubbery by the end. But the stretches were not over after that; I would soon have Nya continue to lie down but have her knees bent and her feet flat on the ground. Then, I would fold one leg over the other bent thigh and have her stretch the tendon that went down from her back to her upper leg. This produced a significant amount of tension and Nya was grumbling again as I made her keep this position right before it got truly unbearable. Still, the stretching sessions were producing results before our eyes, so no matter how much Nya wanted to get out of this, she had to begrudgingly admit that this was doing her some good.

"Let's try something a bit different now," I said after waiting a few minutes to let Nya rest. I then very gently rolled Nya onto her stomach and placed her hands flat on the ground just a few centimeters in front of her shoulders, leaving her arms bent. "I'm going to have you try some push-ups."

"What the hell are push-ups?" Nya asked acidly. "Another concoction devised for your tortuous regimen?"

"Oh, hush. Instead of focusing on your flexibility right now, I'm going to have you work on other muscle groups. Namely, your triceps and pectorals, among others."

Nya blew an unruly strand of hair out of her eye, a move of acceptance. "Fine," she grumbled. "So, what do I have to do?"

"Simple. I already put your hands in the proper position. All you have to do is… well, _push up_ with your hands and extend your arms all the way while keeping your back as flat as possible. I think we'll start with… twenty push-ups in between breaks."

"Twenty?!" Nya was outraged.

"Just kidding!" I laughed. "Fine, how about five for a start?"

Still shooting me a withering look, Nya took a couple of deep inhalations to prepare herself before I saw the muscles in her arms tense and her body lifted up a couple inches. Nya was a light woman – very skinny due to the high metabolism of quarians. Some might even say that she looked malnourished, but she was in perfectly fine condition compared to the rest of her species. Nya was pretty much all muscle and bone, with a subcutaneous fat layer worthy of an athlete. She didn't look dehydrated or starving – she was actually in quite a healthy shape for someone her age.

Despite all that, she was still groaning loudly as she struggled to extend her arms the entire way. Evidentially she was facing problems all over her body as a result of her little heart failure.

"Higher, higher!" I motivated. "This should be a breeze for you!"

" _Stop… talking…_ " Nya uttered as she slowly but surely made it to the top, her face becoming damp again. Making a grateful croak, she unceremoniously flopped back down in an uncontrolled fashion, but she kept her hands planted where they were.

Without needing any more encouragement from me, she started the process all over again. She did three more in painfully slow succession, mouthing curses the entire time as her arms trembled in every direction. Her back slightly bent at times so I had to move down a bit to correct it and make sure that she was doing it properly.

After the fourth push-up, she fell down onto the mat, wheezing once more.

"Can… I stop… now?" she whimpered.

"Sorry, Nya," I shrugged, needing to be dispassionate. "But you've only got one more to go!"

"Have mercy… you bastard."

"Trust me, you'll thank me later," I ignored the insincere insult. "One more push up, Nya. Come on!"

"Argh…" a string of drool dribbled down her lips. "Go to hell, you masochist."

"You do this one more and I'll get you some of those grilled ribs for lunch from that turian fusion joint you love so much."

Nya's head shot up as her mouth immediately began to water. "The ones with that sweet and spicy sauce?" she mumbled as her mind immediately produced a clear image of the food in question. She had been having hospital food throughout her entire stay at Huerta and she had rightfully been griping about it every meal, for it was so tasteless and pulpy that no one, sick or healthy, could possibly enjoy eating here.

I grinned, knowing that I had found a good pressure point. I had learned long ago that if you tempt a quarian with solid food that had actual taste and that did not come from a tube to be sucked through a straw, you could pretty much have them commit murder at your behest. Although I never used such a transparent machination to motivation someone so blatantly before, but for Nya's therapy, I felt that if I gave her a simple goal to pursue, she would doggedly go after a reward that she felt to be lucrative. If that was not going inspire her to try her damnedest, then I had no idea what will.

Instantaneously, Nya howled as she forced her arms to push her off the ground, almost as if she was shoving the entire weight of the Citadel away from her. Her six fingers dug into the slippery surface of the mat and the area underneath her face was wet from the sweat that had dripped off of it. Her elbows steadily unbent themselves further and further, her joints popping in protest. Nya's tongue darted out briefly from her mouth in a delirium, already imagining the delicious taste of ribs.

With a final wrench, Nya shouted in victory as her elbows locked into place, projecting her over the ground in her last push-up. She wobbled as she hung up there, but remained steady. A stupid grin spreading across her face, she let herself back down to the ground very carefully and started to giggle in a mania. I just had a knowing smile on my face in return, a sort of smug expression that I knew was driving Nya crazy but she would not admit to my face of what I had done for her. She had too much pride for that.

"So…" Nya panted as she rolled over onto her back, looking at me upside-down. "When's lunch going to be?"

* * *

An hour and a half later saw the counter littered with take-home boxes that I had brought back from the nearby food court. As promised, I had gone over to the stand where a turian had been spit-roasting some kind of creature that looked like a cross between a puma and a boar, surrounded by a throng of hungry patrons. Whatever the animal was, its meat was considered a delicacy so I had purchased a rack of its ribs for Nya, as per her request.

Since I had levo amino acids, I was unable to eat anything from that particular restaurant, but there were plenty more options for me to choose from that would not end up with me poisoned and foaming at the mouth. I quickly decided on a traditional dim sum place and nabbed an assortment pack of succulent dumplings filled with several different types of meat: shrimp, pork, beef, even soup. I also threw in a couple of sticky and sweet bean buns for dessert, the kind with the fluffy rice exterior. My stomach was rumbling just thinking about them again.

Nya had understandably been overjoyed to see a piping hot meal that did not look like it had just gone through a microwave at low power. She completely tore into her ribs as soon as they had been sterilized, her slightly sharper teeth making short work of the tender meat, which was so soft it already looked like it was about to fall off the bone. I, meanwhile, was shoveling dumplings into my mouth two bites at a time – it had been a long time since I had Asian cuisine and this place on the Citadel was the closest it got to tasting authentic.

The high calorie meal would do Nya some good. The stored energy in the food would help promote Nya's immune system to work faster so that she could heal quicker. Her brain would be nourished and perhaps the damage it had accumulated could eventually be mitigated. I was just glad to see her eating so enthusiastically – that definitely meant that she was feeling well enough by the fact that she had taken on a large lunch.

"You worried about something?" I heard Nya's voice pipe up.

I raised my eyes to find Nya sitting upright on her bed, wiping at her fingers with a napkin, which were sticky with sauce.

I shook my head and wondered if I had a concerned expression on my face without me even knowing it. "Just daydreaming, that kind of stuff."

Nya briefly frowned, not convinced. "You would tell me if you were worried, right?"

 _Goddammit_.

"I don't have a reason to worry at all," I reassured her as I scooted over to her side in my chair. "Should I be worried about anything?"

"I don't know… a lot of things, maybe? Us, Eyzn… me. You seem a little distant, that's all."

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be like that. I don't want to worry at all. I've done enough of that lately."

She sensed more to come from me. "But…?"

I sighed. "But I still want to keep a good eye on you in case… in case there are side effects that have not cropped up yet."

"You mean other than my paralysis?"

"Personality changes, I mean," I said. "Those sort of things."

Nya rolled onto her side and propped up her head with a hand, looking momentarily intrigued. "What are you saying? I might be permanently _changed_ because I almost died?"

I held up my hands to reassure Nya because I didn't want to make _her_ worried. "It's something that reveals itself differently in every person. The effects might be subtle at first, but they can get to be quite extreme. Hell, you might have symptoms that are practically nonexistent. Now, I haven't seen anything yet that would cause concern, and I'm definitely not lying about that, but brain damage doesn't just target your ability to move. If some of your nerves in your brain died off in the area that defined who you are and how you act, those kinds of changes are irreversible. You could end up hating the people you care about, but that's at the far end of the spectrum. You only had a stopped heartbeat for a bit and not a full-blown aneurysm, so the chances of you devolving are luckily very slim. I'm just wondering if that symptoms might develop eventually - symptoms that neither of us know about just yet."

Nya kept her face still as she still continued to wipe her fingers, albeit more delicately and thoughtfully. "I'm still me, I think. If I felt at all different, I would tell you."

"I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference, actually," I grimly pointed out.

" _Nothing has changed_ ," Nya whispered emphatically as she placed a warm hand upon mine, her lips curling in a soft smile. "Nothing."

"You're absolutely sure about that?"

"Completely."

It was this determination that helped to reassure me, especially with this tiny physical connection we now enjoyed together. I found myself losing more and more of the uncertainty that was previously plaguing me, especially from Nya's affirmation that enabled her to declare her stable mental state.

Besides, I figured, it was like I had mentioned before: Nya probably did not accumulate as much damage as I would have initially feared. Some people have come out of brain damage scenarios like completely different people – a tolerant person could turn into an anti-Semite as a result of such an injury. It did not look like Nya's personality would be shifted so drastically from the evidence that I've seen so far. The damage might just manifest itself in slightly different ways. Hell, Nya might find that she would have an aversion to certain foods that she had previously liked and a craving for foods she might have avoided. Small things like that. But it was like I said, I had to keep a close watch for her and note all the changes besides the obvious, if there were any.

I then had to spend the better part of a couple minutes trying to cajole Nya into resuming her stretches, to which she was obviously resisting. I was not going to pull out a bribe this time and I eventually won out by reciting all of the things she would be unable to experience if she was complacent to the idea of being paralyzed below the waist, which I was strongly insinuating would be the outcome if Nya did not continue with her therapy today. She promptly paled and asked for my assistance in helping her back over to the mat, which I gladly provided (with a hidden smirk of my own).

This time around I wrapped what appeared to be nylon bands around Nya's ankles – these were the leg weights that she had been dreading so much because they added a few pounds to her already weakened legs. All Nya had to do with these weights was to try to lift her leg a foot off the ground, which was not easy in her current state, even if she had no weights attached.

Surprisingly, Nya stifled her griping, having managed to either see the bigger picture or that she simply wanted to impress me with her drive. Rep after rep of silently lifting her weighted foot up into the air and back down again and there was nary a peep from Nya except the occasional breathy curse as she willed her unresponsive nerves to flare. It was slow, steady work, but there was certainly an improvement over yesterday.

"You can stop now," I said after a few more minutes had passed, impressed. Nya grinned at me as I unwrapped the bands from her ankles, her chest rising and falling deeply with her breathing.

I found myself staring at her with a soft expression. She held the same view of me in her eyes. I just found her so… attractive. Still very beautiful. My heart began to pound and I started to sweat a bit. I was unsure of how I should feel right now, not knowing if this reaction was appropriate or not. I mean, we had patched things up between us, right? Or… were things still not completely back together? Christ, was I confused.

"How do you feel?" I managed to say, trying to resist the urge to ask Nya something a bit more personal.

Still lying on her back, Nya managed a shrug. "My calves hurt a lot. No surprise there."

"You definitely seem to be doing a whole lot better."

"I know. I have a whole lot of motivation to get better, after all."

"Oh, really?" I arched an eyebrow. "Care to share?"

Nya gave an impish grin. "You'll find out soon enough." Surprisingly, she then sat herself up and raised her arms towards me. "I want another go on the bars."

This was the first occurrence of Nya requesting _more_ therapy. Even for her, this was unusual. I was still planning to have her take it easy. Not many people want therapy in the first place but maybe Nya was determined to prove something to me.

"You up for it?" I checked to confirm.

"Yeah," Nya said. "Come on, help me up."

At some point, all one can do is shrug.

Throwing Nya's arm behind my head, I easily lifted her to her feet and gently guided her back over to the parallel bars. I helped get her hands into position and closely stood by her for a few seconds just to make sure that she didn't keel over unexpectedly. Nya bent her arms a bit, testing her strength and summarily gave a tight grin, a knowing look that she held some indescribable power inside her.

Ever so carefully, Nya lowered her heels down so that her feet were flat on the floor. After filling her lungs with several quick breaths, her leg _moved_ a few inches forward, the skin of her feet briefly sticking to the ground before it slid in the direction she was willing it to go. Nya uttered a short, victorious growl and adjusted her hands on the bars a bit. She wrenched her hips and her other leg crept forward. I could see, even now, that Nya was not placing her full weight on her arms anymore. No, she was actually letting her legs take some of the burden! How could she be recovering so quickly? It did not seem possible.

"Holy… shit," I whispered to myself as I knelt in front of her at the other end of the bars, not being able to think of anything poignant to say.

Encouraged by my remark, Nya's grin became wider. " _Motivation_ , Sam. I told you I had plenty. I'm not going to sit down and lie- _whoa!_ "

As Nya had started to place her hand upon one of the bars to support herself during a step, she had been looking at me during this moment and her hand missed the mark. No longer having leverage on her left side, Nya's eyes opened as wide as they could go as she stumbled and began to fall. I had no idea that I had even begun to move within that span of a second. The very instant I had seen Nya start to pitch forward, I had already lunged towards her with my arms out, making it to her in time to catch her before she could fall and break a leg.

We both blinked as we adjusted to our situation. Nya was staring upward at the ceiling, safely in my arms, and I was breathing heavily, waiting for my adrenaline to die back down after it had so abruptly spiked. Our eyes met and we shared breathy chuckles, both finding our dispositions to be fortuitously timely, if not a little bit cheesy.

Yet we intrinsically knew that opportunities such as these should not be disparaged so easily, nor should they be abandoned as soon as the instinct kicks in.

It was hard to tell who made the first move, me or her. All I knew is that our hands were already safely placed behind each other's head and it was somehow natural for us to bring ourselves closer together. As the distance between us closed until completion, our eyes kept lingering on the other while our lips parted and our mouths finally met.

As natural as breathing.

I was shocked at how warm the feeling was. It had been so long… so long since anything like this had happened to me. To think that I had thought that I would never experience such a thing with this woman again. I even heard Nya shudder out a longing moan, a hungry sound of need, into my mouth as our soft lips pressed together. She was enjoying this… and so was I.

It was perfect. Everything about this was perfect. The heat of Nya's body, her moist lips, her gentle breathing. My heart rate seemed to rebound all over the place as I tried to make heads or tails of this whole thing, but I quickly relaxed as I found myself deeply enjoying the kiss. My hand at Nya's head gently pushed into her hair, keeping her in place, and she did the same to me. Our mouths opened slightly and our tongues tentatively darted out in quick touches, hesitant moves that grew bolder as the taste grew stronger.

I inhaled Nya's scent and it brought about a strong reaction to me. Memories were abound in my brain, floating to the top of my consciousness after having been buried for so long. Passion, melancholy, lust, anger. A conglomeration of the fiercest emotions drove into me like a spear, stealing my breath and claiming control of my body. All I wanted to do was kiss her. I could literally think of nothing else but to stretch this moment, to ride it out for as long as humanly possible.

Because I so deeply cared about this woman.

There had been so much pain that we had silently borne together. The moments where I could recall her screaming in my face, yelling at me to get out of her sight, were some of the worst thoughts that I could ever associate in my mind. A slew of hateful rhetoric all drawn from the mistakes that I had been the cause of. Then there was the sadness - the sight of Nya lying comatose on a flimsy stretcher in the hospital, medicine spilled all over the floor and alarms wailing constantly, never failed to send a surge of panic shuddering down my spine. A different kind of pain: the fear of losing her. I had always wanted to be next to her, to be close. All of the good memories that we had crafted together would have amounted to nothing if we did not peer past our baser selves.

What good memories they were, too. Our meeting aboard her colony ship, where we shared our first real conversation. Her enthusiastic reaction when I asked her to marry me. The feeling of being inside her while she slowly rode me in delight, her breaths wet and filled with lust. Lying next to her on our sides, both of us naked, while my hands stroked her heavily pregnant belly - that had been a time where I had been pleasuring her then too, and it had been so rewarding to hear Nya cry out in her numb state, my hand between her legs while I simultaneously took her from behind, another hand at her breasts. She had been moaning so loudly that I thought she would go into labor. What did it say about us if we had chosen to disregard all of this?

We then broke the kiss almost unexpectedly, not giving me any more time to ponder.

Nya smiled shyly before she brushed a tuft of hair off my forehead. Her face was flushed, excited, and she was breathing hard through her open mouth. Her hand then came to my cheek, her warm hand melding with the skin of my face, sifting the close-cropped hair of my beard.

"You don't have to say anything," Nya whispered as she continued to hold my head.

"No, no," I shook my head lightly. "I… I needed that."

Nya grinned, showing white teeth. "I did too."

"Was it as easy for you as it was for me? It's been so long that I would've understood if you wanted to take things slowly-"

"I'm fed up with taking things slow," Nya said. "I know what I really want now. After being blind for months, everything just feels so clear to me, so obvious. It was the only choice that I had - and the choice that I really did want the most. If anything, I would have expected _you_ to be the one to hesitate."

"Would you think that things would be that simple? Hesitation was never a possibility for me and do you know why? It's because I still _love_ you, you know," I blurted out before I had a chance to comprehend what I was saying.

Nya was definitely struck by my sudden admission because she jerked in my arms, taken aback. "You still feel that way about me?" she breathed, hardly daring to believe it.

"I never did stop," I affirmed. "You've seen me nearly break down a couple times in the last few days. Do you think I would react that way if I _wasn't_ still in love with you?"

"Good point," Nya said as she sheepishly scratched behind an ear. "Not to say you have a monopoly in the conniptions department, but I've just been so... confused lately. It's like I haven't been able to process everything correctly. My body was pulling me in every direction for so long and I really do think, even after all this time, that I have loved you as well… even though… I said I didn't. You know…"

There was a noticeable pause that we let linger, knowing that it was best not to go digging up past conversations that we had already covered. This hatchet had been buried, forgiveness had been doled out. Maybe someday we could find the humor in our little spat, but we still needed a good amount of time to fully process our mental states including accepting the stupidity of our actions in the past.

But at least we were making steps towards the future. Definite and significant steps.

Now I knew for certain that the woman I had loved, and still _did_ love, was still with me right at this moment.

There was no conceivable way that I could be any more relieved right now.

I gave a smirk as I began to help Nya back to her feet as I nudged her back. "Your motivation, eh?"

Nya blithely shrugged. "I never said it would be a hard guess."

"I can definitely imagine that it's effective," I said before I leaned in to give Nya a quick peck on her lips, to which she responded rather intensely as she gave out an involuntary sensual moan. She blushed as I adopted an intrigued expression purely to embarrass her. She waved a hand to push my face away, rolling her eyes as she did so.

"Bosh'tet."

"Couldn't resist. And by the sound of things, neither could you."

Nya's flat look nearly made me erupt into giggles for the timing was just so surreal. As a result, my throat hurt as my stifled laughter was lodged in a painful place, although I was unable to keep my answering grin down.

"You want to continue with your therapy?" I asked.

"If only to wipe that stupid grin off your face," she retorted with a tightened smile of her own.

"Not a chance in hell."

"Then I'll do it, just to show you that I can."

"You don't need to prove that to me," I said as I hugged Nya tightly before leaving her alone on the bars. "I'm _already_ proud of you. I just want you to take it easy, okay?"

"And I already told _you_ ," Nya gritted as she beamed, her arms wobbling as she hoisted herself up on the parallel bars, "I'm fed up with taking things slow." She then gave me a wink. "But I just might take your suggestions into consideration, only because I love you and all that."

Rejuvenated with her new goal, never taking her eyes off of mine, Nya set upon her therapy with a new vigor, one that stirred forth deep within her bosom, providing her with the energy she needed to set upon her healing with a righteous determination.

She took another step.

* * *

Soon after, the room was filled with the sound of water gurgling where once before it had been relatively quiet.

Nya was submerged up to her neck in the bathtub that resided next to the shower, her hospital robe thrown over a chair nearby. I was lying on the couch about a couple meters away, occupying my time by reading a book on my omni-tool while taking glances over at Nya to make sure that she was doing all right.

Funnily, despite the fact that we had had a bathtub in our apartment, Nya had never used it before - her being in a tub of this size right now was the first instance of her doing so. Maybe that was because Nya was somewhat hesitant about using such a contraption without my supervision. I had never seen fit to use the tub before, only the shower, and at home the shower was the only medium of water dispersal that Nya had been exposed to. That was not to say that Nya hated the feeling of water on her skin - on the contrary, she loved it - but being exposed to water in the first place was merely a rare encounter on top of the uncommon amount of times that she would be suitless in the first place. She had enough experience with water to not be afraid of it, but she hadn't been exposed enough to be completely comfortable with it.

Safe to say that Nya was pretty comfortable now. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slightly open - she could very well be asleep. The water was piping hot and steam rose from the still surface in languid swirls. The heat was definitely making Nya very sleepy because there was nothing better than lounging around in a hot bath after a strenuous day, which was exactly why she was in the tub in the first place.

After going at her therapy for most of the day, performing stretch after stretch, Nya's muscles were understandably worn out. She was going through a period where her tendons were hollering bloody murder and each tiny movement produced a sawing sort of pain. Such afflictions could be fixed with anti-inflammatory medications, but Nya had ingested so much medicine lately that I figured that it was best to try a simpler route of healing, which is where the idea of a hot bath came into play. Nya was actually quite enthusiastic about the idea and if anything her expectations were exceeded the moment she lowered herself into the sweltering liquid, the hot water instantly relaxing her muscles and causing goosebumps to spring up all around her skin. Her mouth had comically dropped as she let herself be enveloped by the water and I could tell that she was struggling to hold in an excited groan as her entire body felt like it was floating away right now.

I had switched on the water jets for her once she was settled, purely as a dastardly move on my part because I wanted to see how Nya would react once a new dimension of sensation would be unlocked for her. A layer of bubbles soon coated the surface of the water, tastefully obscuring Nya's body as she languished in the tub. The jets apparently had caused her to be slightly paralytic due to the massaging sensation that pummeled her stiffened limbs, which only loosened even faster in the wake of the intense stimuli. I had left her like this for the past fifteen minutes and so far, Nya had not uttered a word nor had she lifted a finger.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that the bathtub had broken her.

" _Keeeeeelah_ ," Nya suddenly gasped, proving my theory wrong. She lifted a foot from the water and flexed her three toes, the air feeling cold on her skin. Already she was starting to prune but Nya lowered her foot back into the tub and sighed in content.

Turning off my electronic novel, I rose from the couch and walked over to the tub. "Enjoying yourself, I take it?"

"Why didn't you tell me about this thing before?" Nya cracked open an eye as she kept the rest of her body still. "It's… well… you can see the state of me. It's quite something!"

"Oh yeah," I said. "I can definitely see the state you're in. I'll also be able to see if you decide to get a little 'inventive' with the jets and go all cross-eyed on me. I'll probably _hear_ you first, in fact."

Nya's eye widened as she suddenly understood. "Wait… do human woman _do_ that in the tub? I… that's… actually, that's kind of brilliant. Why didn't _I_ think of that?" She looked straight into the water with an awed expression as if she suddenly had an amazing epiphany right then and there.

She caught my eye, fully knowing that I was silently daring her to try whatever ideas were popping into her mischievous little head. Nya, however, simply giggled and kept relaxing in the tub, sliding down and letting the water come up to her chin.

"You planning to be in there long?" I asked as I pulled up a chair.

"Why?" Nya asked as she rose her mouth above the water, spitting out a mouthful. "You want to use it after me?"

"Just asking. I'm not looking to cut off your leisure time. We're not paying for the heating bill - you can stay in there as long as you want."

"I might not be that much longer, in fact," Nya said as she considered her wrinkled fingers. "Ah, nearly thirty years of living in this galaxy and only _now_ I find out about this invention that you humans have apparently kept under wraps for thousands of years. And my people thought you to be uncultured at first."

"I'm sure that humans first considered quarians to be overly cautious, what with your aversion to germs and the like."

"Intriguing at the uncanny comparison, eh?"

"I'd say more like strangely suspicious, considering our similarities in more ways than our attitudes. Aside from your different skin color and slight deviations in bone structure, you could pass for a human the best out of all the other species. Separated by lightyears only to follow a similar pattern of evolution. I wonder what that says about how this galaxy was structured. Is our form - the construction of our arms, legs, head - considered to be perfect, the most advantageous? Or are we just a grand experiment, deposited on separate planets to flourish like bacteria in a petri dish?"

"The reality is probably more complex than I could figure out. If, like some of you humans believe, there is this celestial being of creation, then I'd like to give a stern talking to them about having our immune systems function in a symbiotic relationship. It's an outdated and disadvantageous reaction when taking in the galaxy. It served us well on Rannoch, but it discouraged us from leaving the one planet where we had a chance at survival until we were forced off of it. Only recently it seems like we've just started to lessen the struggle on our lives, especially since the war ended. I've been languishing in my suit for too long - we all have. It's a stupid, stupid weakness. It's why I almost died in a circumstance that would have done nothing to any other species in this stupid galaxy. I'd like to hear some sort of justification for why we turned out this way. Just… some explanation."

I reached down into the tub and procured Nya's hand. Her wet palm gently squeezed against my dry one and she sighed in relief.

"We need to be so much more careful, Nya," I told her. "I… I don't think that I can go through this with you again."

"I know," she dimly nodded. "I know, Sam."

"No, I don't think you do," I got out of the chair and kneeled down by the tub, my face serious. "Nya, watching you in that room die before my eyes was the scariest thing I've ever lived through. We had been so lucky beforehand with your health that we got careless. I don't ever want to take the risk of losing you to an infection if we could have easily prevented it."

Nya lightly smacked the surface of the water with a hand as her lip began to tremble. "I said I _know_ , Sam!" she said a little more forcefully, but it was an anger that was not directed at me. She then shook her head apologetically. "I'm sorry. It's just that I really don't like it when I think you're talking to me condescendingly, when you seem to be thinking of me as delicate."

"That's not what I-,"

"But you're right," Nya continued. "I _have_ been getting sloppy. My immune system _is_ a weakness. It _does_ make me delicate… and that's the problem. I hate living like I'm in a bubble with you, I always have. I've been envious of you being able to live life without a suit, without taking any consideration to that part of your health, that I sometimes imagine myself going without it altogether one day. That will never happen, of course, but sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to show you that I'm stronger than what I appear to be, that I one day can look upon you without needing a mask at all. It's a fool's hope, Sam, and that's what's made me careless."

"Yet I'm not blaming you for feeling like that," I assured her. "I probably will never understand this… subdued agony that you've been feeling this entire time, but that doesn't mean that I can't empathize with your feelings. Suit, no suit, it makes no difference to me, honestly. I know how important it is for you to be free of the damned thing every once in a while and that makes those moments special to me. With it on, that still doesn't change how I feel about you. But this is just going to have to be something that we need to watch a whole lot more closely. I don't want to lose you again and I want to have every single base covered to give myself - and you - proper peace of mind."

"On that, we agree," Nya said as she raised her shoulders a bit out of the water before settling in to her new adjusted position. "Although I wouldn't be surprised if Eyzn would try something so cruel like that again."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from the bastard. He needs to be put down, I'm just saying it straight out. But we have to know where it is he's chosen to go to ground to and we don't have anything on that. Speaking of which, there is something, now that I think about it, that's odd to me."

Nya tilted her head. "What's that?"

"It's just that… our apartment. I'm just wondering how Eyzn found out where we lived."

Nya blinked as she tried to consider all the information like I was. "Perhaps he might have checked the directory? I know the complex stores everyone's names there."

My eyes stopped focusing as I dimly waggled a finger in thought.

"I thought of that, but in reality that shouldn't work. Our complex has our names on the title… but for security reasons it doesn't indicate which room and floor we live on. Only _tenants_ can access that information, _not_ guests. Assuming Eyzn didn't hack his way into the database, I doubt that his team was knocking on every door and looking in every window for us. That building's more than a hundred stories tall and it's not exactly cramped in there."

"You're right…" Nya said, now on the same page. "Something doesn't make sense."

I gripped the edge of the tub as I fixated myself at Nya, my eyes imploring but not accusing.

"Nya, who was in our apartment since we separated? Think carefully. Did you bring anyone to our home that might have seemed suspicious? A contractor to fix the kitchen? Friend from work?"

Nya's hands rose to meet her face, leaving wet trails as the bathwater ran down her cheeks and plastered her tangled hair to her scalp. Heart noticeably beating faster, she shook her head in aggravation, desperately trying to claw up memories that seemed to be refusing to be found.

"There wasn't… there wasn't anyone," she murmured as she stared off into space. "I mean… of course there was Rie… a-and Chandler. And Tavre, too!"

"Tavre?" I repeated, the name sounding so familiar to me.

"Tavre Lantios. My friend in C-Sec, remember?"

I did. Medium-sized asari. Had a pair of swords on her back. Rather forceful personality - I now remembered that I didn't like her very much.

Suddenly feeling cold, I took a swallow before speaking slowly. "How many times was Tavre in the apartment?"

"I don't know. Maybe two or three times."

"And you're sure that she's your friend?"

"We met up for casual drinks after work sometimes. She also acted as a sympathetic ear when I was… having trouble with you."

I now rubbed at my jaw tiredly. "I suppose it's too much to ask that she had no idea where your apartment was located within the building, yes?"

"Actually, now that you mention it, I do remember her taking the lead at least once when we were traversing the hallways to our apartment. Why? You don't think that _she_ would have something to do with all this?"

"All I know is that I'm not a big fan of coincidences such as these," I grumbled as I abruptly stood up and practically rushed over to the closet where I had hung my jacket. I threw the large coat around me and made sure that it covered the pistol where it was holstered at my waist. Nya, still in the tub, stared at me in confusion.

"What the… where are you going?"

"I'm just going out for a bit," I answered before I gave my pistol one last check to make sure that it was loaded. "I'll make sure that Sagan's covering the door while I'm gone."

"I don't understand, what do you think is going on?"

The pistol was shoved back into the holster and I straightened out the lines of the jacket with a firm yank. "No idea just yet, but I'm sure as hell going to find out for myself. You just stay there, relax in your bath, and wait. I won't be gone long."

In hindsight, it would have been comical to look upon Nya, looking so forlorn in the middle of that frothing tub, but suffice to say that neither of us had the inclination to laugh for subjects like this. In any case, Nya was still too exhausted to continue this conversation further, so she simply fell back into the tub, but not before telling me two words before I stepped into the decontamination checkpoint.

"Be careful."

"No promises," I tried my best to appear cocky as I flipped her a mock salute before heading out.

Now all I needed to do was to find a cab.

* * *

It only took me fifteen minutes to reach the C-Sec station from Huerta, which was great for me because I was so far keeping my promise to Nya about not taking long at all. Skycar stands were plentiful at Huerta due to it being a heavily congested spot for foot traffic as well as it being a place of relative importance - all medical facilities had high priority on the Citadel. Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. Hell, I might be back in Nya's room within an hour.

Except that I had some waiting to do.

I had directed the skycar to park directly in front of the C-Sec station so that I could have an unobstructed view of the entrance. This particular station was Nya's station, her stomping ground. I knew this was also where Tavre worked - I had made an automated inquiry and found out that she had clocked in today for work. Shift change was coming up in mere minutes, so I figured that I would be able to get a glimpse of her through the transport once she exited. I was not exactly keen on confronting her in the middle of a police station, considering the luck I've had with cops in the past.

The longer I was lingering in the skycar, the higher my bill was starting to rack up. I ignored the increasing meter charge and settled into the uncomfortable seat, keeping my eyes glued to the doorway. The skycar's polarized canopy would conceal my view to any passerby, keeping me, in a sense, invisible to any prying eyes.

"This is fucking ridiculous," I grumbled to myself, already antsy after five minutes had passed by.

Not content with idly twiddling my thumbs, I slipped my hand into my pocket and brought out my father's pipe. What little light was in the cockpit shone upon the polished wooden bowl and softly glinted upon the dull gold inserts. I don't know how the pipe had wound up in my possession once again - it had been changing hands so often that I failed to notice at times - but I had swiped it from the apartment before I left, just to take along with me as a keepsake. I also had a pack of smoking tobacco with me so I doled out a good offering and crammed it into the bowl after teasing it with my fingers.

Finding a match, I flicked it against the center console and a ball of soft yellow light furrowed into existence before it turned hot orange as I brought it to the pipe. Wafts of smoke billowed from the bowl and I waved the match to put it out and deposited the burnt stick into one of the cup holders.

I coughed as I took a pull of the pipe. That was reflex on my part - the smoke itself was not causing me to cough. This was merely the last struggle of a dying habit that I apparently should have kicked long ago. To be honest, I think I was just smoking this thing because I was bored, not because I could derive any pleasure from it. The reason why I thought that way was because this kind of tobacco I was smoking had no nicotine in it.

Ah, we were currently reaping the rewards made possible by the wonderful gene researchers completely entrenched in redefining reality and biology as we knew it. Nicotine-less tobacco - it's the way of the future! In all seriousness, I could still technically get a fix from smoking this type of tobacco, but there was still this disparity in my mind that made me consider the fact that my so-called reality was turned completely upside down all thanks to some scientist playing god with his gene research.

A hundred and fifty years is like an eternity in the field of gene research. I recalled back in 2015 that corporations and private citizens were making new developments in that area all the time at a rate that seemed too astounding to imagine: people were discovering and defining the genes that drove our behaviors, they were growing human vocal cords in birds, they were creating strands of norovirus that curbed our destructive habits, and people were starting to use gene tests as admissible evidence in court cases, particularly custody cases. GMOs for the food industry were perhaps the most common and controversial examples of this sort of research back in the day. Even so long ago, these startling advances seemed more like science fiction than any other research we had going on in unrelated industries. Frankly, it was somewhat terrifying to think that all this research had gone on for so long _unregulated,_ with all these creations having been developed without limits, without anyone watching the rate of progress. Now imagine a hundred and fifty years of development in gene research from then, even taking into consideration the effects of governmental intrusion - the possibilities certainly seem limitless now, don't they?

Our white blood cells could be engineered to produce medicinal antibodies that could attack cancerous cells now. An entire field's worth of grain could be produced in two weeks with engineered seeds. Implanted tissues could stimulate areas of the cortex and promote a rapid growth in brain cells. Additives to food, heightened pharmacological effects, complete control over redefining our bodies beyond our genetic limitations. The scope of the research had spiraled far beyond what a simple man from the past could possibly comprehend.

This type of research had also attracted the attention of the people who made substances that were high in demand, of course. The liquor and cigarette companies in particular were intrigued at the possibilities that could be incurred, especially after enduring decades of bad press and lawsuits from deaths due to organ decay as a result of overindulgence. Over the years, traditional tobacco began to be phased out for a substitute that had been engineered in a lab, a plant that looked like tobacco, smelled like tobacco, and could be smoked like tobacco. But it wasn't tobacco. The plant was actually called hamalus, a shortened version of the longer name given to it by its patent holder. Hamalus was a boon for the public because it did not have any nicotine in it at all, yet it used proprietary chemicals that did not act as carcinogens so that no one could develop any health problems from smoking them.

Smoking purists bitched and moaned about hamalus when it was first released, stating that there was an obvious difference in the effect that they got when using it. Whether there was a difference or not, people ignored the whining of the snobs because there was actually no discernable distinction that many could tell, including me, and that was good enough for the general public. Plus, it also made for good press which translated into increased sales. Besides, hamalus hardly left the traditional stink of smoke behind on my clothes - actually it smelled more like I had spent a little too long at a barbeque joint - and I no longer had to worry about lung cancer. Sure, lung cancer was easily curable in this day and age, but it was the principle of the whole thing: why pay for treatment when you could have easily avoided the cause?

In a way, I was kind of disappointed in myself for this slight breach back towards this somewhat unhealthy habit. I had successfully kicked smoking cold turkey years ago, but I had only begun to start slipping back into it. Sign of stress, perhaps? Using such substances did serve to calm me somewhat, but I knew that I was going to have to do better in the future to keep these impulses under control. I think I just didn't like the obvious signs of weakness that I was emitting.

Despite my muted internal debate, I continued to puff at the pipe, letting a hazy mist of smoke start to collect at the ceiling of the skycar before the vehicle's automated filters sucked it all out. There was a slight sizzling noise every time I took a drag, my concentration still firmly locked onto the door of the C-Sec station.

Five more minutes passed. Then ten. I was getting bored again. Where the hell was Tavre?

I was in the middle of putting out my pipe and knocking out the used tobacco into a baggie when I spotted a flash of movement in the corner of my eye. I looked up without moving my head and spotted a familiar-looking asari, appearing ghostly in the dim light, wearing a sort of white armor that covered only her chest, and who had two swords on her back - old-fashioned weapons of her people.

Tavre. Finally.

Very carefully, I waited until Tavre walked by where my skycar was parked - she seemed to take no notice of me - and I then pulled the latch for the doors to open, but kept my hands tight on the straps so that they would not make too much noise as they hissed upright. Without a sound, I extricated myself from the vehicle and shoved the pipe into one of my jacket pockets as I began to follow Tavre, skirting around the rows of parked ships so that I would not be easily spotted.

Tavre did not seem to be at all concerned, because she kept her head pointed straight in front of her, not looking behind her for fear of being followed (which she very well was). I was a little more confident as I edged out onto the deserted footpath, closed storefronts on my left and skycar parking docks on my right with branching pathways completely barrier-less, elevating the danger of falling straight to your death if you took the wrong step. My arm pressed against my side, making sure that the pistol was still at my hip. I took a deep breath as I used the shadows to my advantage, keeping my profile low and in the dark as much as possible.

Tavre kept on walking down the path, not seeming to be heading anywhere in particular until she abruptly wheeled left down a thin alleyway. Curious, I followed behind her, making sure to have the soles of my shoes hit heel-first so as to minimize the amount of noise created.

The alley did not seem to be oriented in the direction of anywhere important, but Tavre still did not figure that I was behind her. I still had a good view of her form, so she was not deliberately trying to lose me just yet. Maybe she still had not realized that she had been followed ever since she left C-Sec.

Regardless, she would get wise eventually. I decided to get the ball rolling on that front.

"Tavre," I called to her.

She still kept walking. Was she ignoring me? Incredulous, I tried again.

"Tavre."

Nope. Still no response. She was sauntering in her original direction, her head not so much as twitching behind her to appraise the person trying to get her attention.

Suddenly firm, I stopped in the middle of the alley and withdrew my gun, letting it hang at my side.

" _Sievra_ ," I hissed.

There was a skidding sound of boots suddenly halting. The asari finally had quit walking and was standing completely still, her legs slightly spread apart, her hands open and waiting.

Then she turned completely around, a nasty smile on her face.

"Well, it took you long enough," the asari smirked, but strangely, she did not go for her weapons in response. "I was wondering how long I was going to have to keep up this charade."

My blood began to boil at this confirmation and the hand clutching my pistol began to shake as I clutched the grip even tighter. I kept my voice low and even but my nerves wired hot, ready to react in a micro-second in case violence should erupt without warning.

"The deception was impressive, I'll admit," I kept a conversational tone, "but the convenient occurrences added up too high. I figured there was a reason why I didn't like you."

"Funny, Eyzn _did_ mention that I had been pushing my luck lately," Sievra said as she reached up and started to peel away what looked like a clear film away from her face. The wrapping made a sticky sound as it was pried away from the asari's scaly skin and her features took on a harder appearance after the film had been removed - her skin hue also appeared to change from deep blue to an intense purple. _Now_ she looked a whole lot more like the asari that I had seen at Eyzn's side occasionally and not the C-Sec officer that I had been introduced to a couple of times in the past.

Sievra cackled as she dangled the film, pinched between two fingers, and she let it flutter harmlessly to the ground. "Like it? It's a synthesized nano-weave. Programmable. Helps mold your facial features into a different configuration. How else could I present myself to you as the feisty Tavre Lantios?"

"Did Tavre even exist?" I spread my arms wider as I sighed. "Or was that just a name you made up?"

"Just a meaningless name. Nothing special about it. It was never meant to stand up to scrutiny. All I needed from it was the ability to get close to my target: your wife."

"Not kill her, I'd wager? You had plenty of chances to do that already. Discredit her, perhaps? Make her less desirable in my eyes?"

Sievra looked up as she momentarily considered her next words. "That's pretty much it. I just did what Eyzn told me to do: get close to Nyareth and subtly try to sway her towards a pattern of behavior that was most self-destructive. Mostly it was just me taking her side whenever she was sobbing her eyes out over arguments that you two had in the past - be the 'supportive friend' and all that. Other times, I tried to see if I could get her to sleep with me when I thought she was at her most emotionally fragile, but the bitch was never into that sort of thing. She never could get you out of her head, apparently. Weak and stupid, just like her husband."

"God, all of you are beyond pathetic," I groaned. "Eyzn, Vahl, and now you. How the hell were you ever convinced to take his side, asari?"

Sievra's smile was aggravating as she spread her hands wider in a shrug, oddly still not making a move for any of her weapons. "Nothing as complex as you might imagine. Mercenaries, I'm sad to say, are 'a dime a dozen,' if I'm using your expression correctly. It's not hard to hire a contract killer, as a matter of fact. Eyzn came to me, said he could pay me at a competitive price, met all my demands including several months' pay in advance, and promised that I could do some espionage work - my forte. It all sounded good to me, the credit orders cleared, so I had no reason to turn him down."

"A refreshingly honest answer, for once," I shook my head in derision. "But you're still loyal to a paycheck. Would you help commit genocide for Eyzn if you were paid at the 'competitive price?'"

"That might be a bit out of my zone of comfort," Sievra simpered. "But if the rewards were great, then I might just take such a request into consideration."

"Disgusting."

"That's the nature of the game, love," Sievra wiggled her hips tauntingly. "We've all got to make a living in this galaxy."

"Your methods leave a lot to be desired," I said flatly as I finally lifted my pistol at the asari. "All right, sweetheart, enough games and out with it. Where's Eyzn?"

"Oh, surely you don't think it to be that easy?" Sievra fake-pouted as she stuck out her lower lip.

"I frankly don't give a flying fuck. All I want is a straight answer or-"

"-You'll shoot me?" Sievra blinked mischievously. "That's an interesting way of framing this argument. I might have the answer you're looking for but if I don't give it to you… you'll kill me? If that happens, you'll have lost the information you want in the first place. You sure you don't want to rethink your strategy?"

Yeah, this woman was really getting on my nerves. "I'll shoot you in the leg, how about that? I can improvise from there. I want Eyzn and I'm not going to bargain with anything else other than your life."

"He's ready for you, you know."

"I don't care."

"No, you don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood just how much he's prepared for this moment. He _wants_ you to find him, but he doesn't want to make it easy for you. He's had everything planned out since the beginning. He's already won."

"You're raving," I tonelessly stated. "And I've just about lost my patience."

Ripples of blue energy were now starting to melt into existence around Sievra's head and I only realized too late what was about to happen.

"Funny," Sievra snarled with a maniacal grin. "I was just about to say the same thing."

She then waved a hand and hurled something blinding at me and I was quickly overwhelmed before I could pull the trigger.

 _I stumbled backward as a maelstrom of cloudy waves slammed into my body. My feet clacked on solid ground yet when I opened my eyes, I quickly realized that I was standing on nothing but air… yet I was perfectly stable. I grunted in surprised and shut my eyes as flashes of pure light erupted one by one in sequence around my body, seemingly searing me with heat._

 _Undulating and slow-moving trickles of blue lightning arcs streamed through the tornado of black holes and noble gases that all moved in a counter-clockwise pattern around my body. Waves of pressure resulted in eruptions of noise as disparate gases crashed together. I felt hot, cold, and sick all at once. My arm raised to make sense of things and I realized that I was no longer holding my pistol. I had apparently lost it somewhere._

 _Now both of my hands came to my head as my brain went on overload. There was this mounting ache at my forehead and every single hair on me was standing on end. It was like I had been dipped in electricity. Drool trickled out of my mouth, tears hurt in my eyes, and my throat felt cracked and parched._

" _What the hell did you do to…"_

 _The thick fog parted to reveal Sievra, who looked different from when I had seen her just a second ago. That was probably because she was stark naked right now. The light was dim but bright enough that I could see everything - Sievra was not even bothering to cover herself up. She had on this malicious smirk and she spread her legs a bit wider as she stood to give me a better view before her hands came to her breasts to squeeze them tauntingly._

" _...me?" I finished._

 _Sievra did not answer but began to sway, continuing to flaunt her curves as she started to saunter toward me in her nude state. Confused beyond belief, I could only arch an eyebrow as the asari crept closer, not knowing what the hell was going on. As the asari approached, I could see that her eyes were completely dilated, filling the sclera and turning them completely black._

" _Aw, poor human," Sievra clucked seductively. "You've never tried this before? You have never melded minds with one of my kind, have you?"_

 _So that explained this… weird state. I turned around completely, trying to make heads or tails of my surroundings, but what I could see pretty much was this bizarre landscape of gravitationally unaffected storms and currents of flowing power. To say that I was disoriented was a light appraisal of the situation._

 _Then why was Sievra naked? Was she just trying to distract me? Was this all an act?_

 _And how was I going to claw my way back to the real world?_

" _Our nervous systems are trying to connect," Sievra whispered as she tiptoed forward. "Memories, intent, and feelings can be shared between us… if both partners desire. You resist the meld, human. Admirable. Most would rather give in. No matter, there are ways to get someone to open up. Especially men, I always know what men want."_

 _Before I could be spared a second to answer, the naked asari now was up against me, pressing her cool body against mine as she began to grind her hips upon my thigh. I hardly dared move, but I was not tied down or anything. I was simply perplexed at this whole situation to have much of a reaction in the first place._

 _Sievra seemed to notice this after twenty seconds of nothing happening. She mustered a fake smile and wrapped her arms around my head. Spiderweb-like fingers of lightning reached down from the sky and smoky trails crept around our feet. The asari felt the atmosphere change and she sighed in contemplation._

" _Do you not like what you see?" she murmured. "Can you not feel the impulses? Would you not like to take me here? We're alone, no one can see. Does the sight of me really not please you?"_

 _My answer was obvious, as conveyed by my upcoming tone._

" _No!" I finally blurted out, absolutely incredulous. Sievra jolted against my body, which was still as rigid as a board, as my face conveyed a look of surprise and disgust. "In no way, shape, or form do I find you remotely attractive!"_

 _That was a partial lie, but it was correct in a way. Sievra, when viewed through a dispassionate lens, was technically not bad looking. Some people would even easily say that she was beautiful. But just because she was naked next to me did not mean that I wanted to have sex with her. A friend of mine from years ago had summed up this state of mind with a metaphor that I had always found to be humorous and apt: "Just because I see a nice car and recognize that it's a nice car does not mean that I want to fuck the nice car."_

 _Yeah… there was only one person these days that I would go to bed with in a heartbeat… and it sure as hell was not Sievra._

 _The asari bit her lip as she became more and more flummoxed. "What are you saying? You really don't find me pretty?"_

 _Uh oh. My inner asshole was now itching to show his face. This was an opportunity that he could never resist._

" _Talk to me later when you've lost weight. I'd make another comment but it's obvious that you have a lot on your plate."_

 _Take note: the cheapest shot of all when trying to insult a woman is to aim at her weight (or their eyebrows, for some reason). Resorting to such a tactic is a dirty, dirty move, but it never fails to elicit the most vivid of reactions humanly possible, which was exactly what I was intending to drive out._

 _Sievra's response was just one such example of this insensitive barb._

 _The asari shoved me away fiercely as she emitted a piercing screech, her eyeballs bugging out of her sockets and her mouth opened wide like a banshee's. I lurched backwards in response to the shove and tripped over nothing, sending myself spinning through puffy echoes of dying stars and colliding atoms all exploding simultaneously. The lightning merged with the entropic cataclysm and sent ripples through my DNA, warping me from the inside out. I heard screams mixed with my own shouts._

Then I felt cool air on my face.

I hit the floor of the Citadel hard, skinning my knees underneath my pants, and looked up to see Sievra fleeing from me in a hurry, her form rapidly diminishing as she bustled down a corner. The lingering ache in my head from the mind meld still resided, but the pain only served to infuriate me. Snarling, I stumbled back up to give chase when all of a sudden I felt hands at my shoulders grab me and hurl me into the nearby tool rack that was hanging on a wall. I yelled in surprise and was still reeling from the shock of breaking the mind meld that it took me a bit to see who had approached me.

Quarians, of course. Two of them, both armored, colored black. Sievra's bodyguards, I would wager. They had probably been following her at a distance for safety and had seen me try to attack her. Both of them held knives in their hands and they stepped towards me tentatively, as one would approach a dangerous animal.

I reached for my weapon only to find out that it was no longer in my hand anymore. I then saw it lying far away, past the quarians. That was annoying, but I realized that I must have dropped the weapon during the meld. That was going to make things a little tricky.

One of the quarians jabbed in my direction with his knife. "You know how this is going to end, Ahto Da'var."

My back against the wall, I could only sigh in disgust. "Quite frankly, I really have no clue how this is going to end."

"There's no point in trying to spoil things further," the first quarian said before he suddenly erupted in a quick lunge. The knife glittered as it diminished to a point, aimed directly at the middle of my chest.

At the last second, I sidestepped the attack and the quarian ran headlong into the wall at full speed. The alien let out a shout as he stumbled in a daze, his knife knocked out of his hand and spinning away towards the rows of parked skycars. I stutter-stepped after the evasion, trying to figure out what to do next, when the next quarian chose his time to come at me.

There was a steel flash and I jerked my body away as best as I could, but a line of red quickly flew out of my body near my shoulder and I roared as the quarian's knife completed its arc, the blade now partially stained with my blood. I touched the cut that had parted my jacket and flesh - a superficial wound, but it was throbbing like hell and it was bleeding all over the place. Honestly, it just made me fighting mad.

I knocked over a crate as I lunged forward to grasp at the knife-wielding quarian, but he took another swing at me as I approached. More blood sprayed out of me and I had to jump back, now clutching my wrist as I felt hot liquid try to rush out from where the knife had bit into me.

Obviously what I was doing wasn't working. If I kept this up I was going to either end up looking like I had been thrown through a plate glass window or I was going to eventually keel over from blood loss.

Still energized for the moment by the wounds that had been inflicted on me, I held my ground as both quarians began to advance on me again, swinging and jabbing with their knives. They did not move to erupt in a full-on tackle with me, but they were content enough to try their luck and see if they could manage to stick me with their blades. It would only take a sloppy mistake on my end for it to all be over.

"Well? I've got things to do, so get on with it!" I shouted, startling them into action.

One quarian charged, and then the other followed suit. I managed to grasp the wrists of the first quarian as he closed the gap, locking him into place to prevent him from stabbing me, and then I used my full weight to angle the alien I had in my grip in front of his charging partner, partially blocking him from my view. The second quarian still had built up a good amount of momentum and I winced as the alien's knife slipped through the guard and made contact with my side. Fresh blood wept down my hip and leg and I felt a burning sensation from the exposed nerves.

Roaring, I dug my legs into the ground and _pushed_ off, driving the tangled trio of us over to the wall. The two quarians slammed into the firm surface and let out cries of their own as I battered them against the side of the alleyway. My hands were still fiercely clutching the wrists of the first quarian that had attacked me, knowing that if I let go he would have nothing in the way preventing him from stabbing me. Realizing this, the quarian reared his head back before he smashed his armored helmet directly into my forehead. I screamed and nearly was driven to a knee, but I did not let go. A tremendous stab of pain erupted in my skull and blood crept into my eye.

I heard a rattling noise and looked down just in time to see my father's pipe slip from my pocket, only to tumble through the air and land upon the ground. With an almost imperceptible crash, the pipe broke into pieces, scattering the delicate remnants across the scuffed ground as a thin puff of wooden dust emitted from the cracks.

" _No…_ " I uttered as I saw my father's pipe destroyed before my eyes.

The quarians similarly paused as they beheld my fearsome face. The first quarian, the one who I still held in my clutches and who had head-butted me, began to tremble in my grip.

My teeth bared, an inhumane growl raced from my throat as every nerve in my body flared at the hottest temperatures.

"You son of a-!" I bellowed as I drove a knee between the first quarian's legs.

The alien made a choking sound and dropped his blade immediately. His eyes crossed and his hands instantly shot to his waist as he disengaged by toppling to the ground, momentarily paralyzed.

The second quarian looked at his cohort to see what the matter was and that was when I seized my chance. I reached over to the rack of tools and lifted a hefty chain coil. Metal links rattled against one another noisily as I unfurled the alloy rope to its full three meter length. I then raised my arm and swiped across, sending the chain screaming through the air in a solid arc.

The timing was perfect. The quarian turned back towards me in response to the clanking noise and his head immediately was thrown back with a clang as the chain impacted along his helmet, sending a ripple of sparks to scurry in the air. The quarian screamed and dropped his knife as well as he momentarily touched his heavily scratched helmet. He stumbled backwards, now beginning to flee, his fighting instincts completely quashed. He paid no attention to his incapacitated comrade as he merely stepped over him and rushed over to the skycar stands in search of a quick exit.

" _Is this the best Eyzn has to offer?!_ " I screamed at the panicking aliens, rattling the metal whip and cracking it across a light fixture, sending an explosion of glass flying. "Are you not capable enough to do his dirty work?! _Come on,_ you bastards!"

In pursuit, the chain still clutched in my hand, I doggedly followed the quarian that was retreating, leaving the other that I had kneed rolling in pain on the ground.

The chain cracked as I ran, sending it hurtling in wide arcs across anything I could find. Walkway lights, tiles of the floor, machinery stations. Sparks blossomed in a blinding shower. Glass was shorn and cracked along impact points. Light caught portions of the chain arc, a blur faster than the eye could perceive as I continued to give chase to the alien trying to outrun his fate.

I was faster than the quarian, a fact that the man had not seemed to consider as he scrambled down a small staircase. He nearly took a tumble as he edged a little too close to the end of the walkway and he spent precious seconds trying to compose himself to make his getaway.

Unfortunately for him, I used those seconds to my advantage.

" _Oh no, you don't!_ " I roared as I was suddenly upon him, having lowered my body so that I could charge at him, elbow-first.

I could not have struck the quarian any better.

The alien pinwheeled his arms as he made a _whumpf_ sound from the air being driven out of his lungs. The force of the blow had sent him flying several feet through the air… completely off the edge of the guardrail-less walkway. I barely skidded to a stop in time, my own weight threatening to carry me off as well, as I beheld the quarian's final stance as he silently fell into the abyss… far, far away. His limbs thrashed as if he was moving underwater, completely consumed by panic as he realized that he was no longer on solid ground, but he was quickly swallowed up by darkness and quick flashes of light from the glassy buildings below.

No trace remained of the quarian up on this level. It was like he had never existed.

Well, that was one idiot taken care of. Now… for the other.

The sound of a skycar activating from near the lots drew my attention in a flash. I whirled to see that the last quarian was frantically pummeling away at the controls of the vehicle, seemingly unsuccessful in getting the skycar to fly away. Like his hapless partner, he had also had enough with trying to take me out.

Must be a running theme around here.

Not taking any chances to see if he was experienced enough with the equipment to get away, I bustled and hopped over obstacles in a fearsome dash, smashing aside stacks of carts and crates like I was a tank. The quarian looked up from the dashboard to see me bearing down on him and he screamed, his hands thrown up in mercy.

The doors to the skycar were locked, I assumed, but the quarian inside of it was way too freaked out to let me in for a friendly chat, so I figured that I might apply a rather gentle approach to the situation in order to defuse the tension between us.

I took the chain in my hand and started beating the hell out of the skycar.

The metal links left white gouges in the paint every time I savagely whipped the chain down on the skycar. The vehicle's bodywork was made out of a material that was akin to fiberglass - as a result, it cracked easily from the force that I was exerting upon it, exposing the innards behind the covering. I then aimed the chain at the window and it disintegrated after a couple of blows, cracking once, twice, and finally caving in and sending sparkling shards of safety glass streaming into the cabin.

The quarian inside the skycar was shrieking his stupid head off as I must have looked like a madman in the midst of destroying his getaway vehicle. The alien scrambled to the other side of the cabin and fumbled at the door latch to escape, his body jerking in all directions as he fought to get as far away from me as possible.

The door on my end was still locked and refusing to open, so I began kicking it as hard as I could near the joint. A couple of impacts and the housing cracked and, definitely looking crazed, I picked up the remains of the door (which did not weigh all that much) and hurled it behind me, giving me complete access to the cabin and the quarian inside.

Now the alien was _really_ screeching his lungs out. His trembling fingers finally found the door release latch and he tumbled onto the ground outside in a heap. Growling myself, I awkwardly knocked my way through the skycar and clambered over the center console to make it to the other side. The quarian had gotten to his feet by now, another knife in his hand, but he was still attempting to flee rather than turn and face me in one-on-one combat.

That was all to change when I, hot on the quarian's heels, cracked the chain like a whip and it coiled immediately around one of the quarian's ankles. I held the chain firmly and soon it jerked in my hand as the alien futilely tried to continue his escape, which produced the exact effect that I had been hoping for.

The quarian let out a surprised cry as he pitched forward, tripped up from my chain, and hit the ground upon his stomach. He fell very still, barely stirring, and I jogged over to him, my guard still raised in case the alien wanted to try anything cute.

The chain fell loose around the ankle of the quarian, but he still was not moving all that much. Confused, I tentatively knelt beside him and rolled the man over so that I could have a look at him.

"Aw… fuck," I groaned.

There was a knife embedded smack-dab in the middle of the quarian's chest. The idiot must have fallen upon it while it had been in his hand. Blood gushed around the blade to the tempo of his dying heartbeat, and I could see that the bottom half of the quarian's visor was stained red on the inside - he was hemorrhaging, spitting up his own blood.

It was obvious that the man was going to die. All the medi-gel in the galaxy would not do any good to him now. It looked like the blade had missed his heart but it was embedded so deep into his body that it had done irreparable damage. A lung had most likely been punctured as well. The wound was so fatal that he probably would not live long enough to suffer from the effects of his atrocious immune system. Even though he probably had been infected from multiple pathogens from the breach in his suit, the internal bleeding was going to be the thing that would finish him off. He was done for.

The quarian gurgled helplessly as he fruitlessly tried to grasp the knife sticking out of him like he was a butcher's block. Blood was now trickling out of his body in such volume that it looked almost black. His arms soon fell to his sides, his strength sapped. Convulsions started to wrack his body as his brain was slowly being starved of blood. He probably only had a few minutes now, maybe seconds.

I gripped his shoulders and shook him forcefully. "Talk to me! Where… is… Eyzn?! Tell me!"

The quarian coughed and more blood splattered the inside of his visor. I could hear a faint whisper emit through his vocabulator but the sound was too distorted for me to make out.

" _Where is he?!_ " I shouted.

There was a gagging sound and the quarian's body gave a violent shudder. His eyes then started to roll up into his head as a pitiable moan sounded from the pit of the alien's stomach.

"Shit," I sighed as I let go of the quarian.

It was now too late for me to conduct an interrogation. The quarian had abruptly passed. I was now left standing over a corpse, the bleeding from the stab wound now beginning to slow in the absence of a heartbeat. A wide pool of blood spread out from one side of the quarian, a mirror-like surface in which I could perceive my own scratched reflection.

I dropped the chain in my hand, letting it harmlessly rattle to the floor, while I stepped away from the body. I took a deep breath and let it out, calmly flexing my nerves as I slowly and dispassionately turned away from the horrid sight. Finding no reason to stay here, I began to trudge away from this place, eager to get back to this hospital. I was bleeding, battered, and bruised. Reason enough to go to a safe place to rest and recharge.

As I quickly bustled away back to where I parked, I realized that I no longer was all that conflicted about killing people anymore. It was all second nature to me now - I was no longer constrained by my conscience. I could mourn about my cynical change later for I was still occupied by the need to find my foe, even though I was constantly running into dead ends on that front. Still, I had to admit that I should at least feel some remorse for killing those two quarians back there, men who probably had been perfectly good people at one point.

But focusing on that point in the past would just destroy me. I could not allow such sorrow to cloud my mind.

Yet I would be hard-pressed to feel any guilt about this for a long time.

If anything, I felt even more dangerous.

* * *

 **A/N: The ending of _Patriarch_ is nearly upon us! How crazy is that? Of course, the ending's not going to come quite so soon, but it seems like it's barrelling towards us at an astonishing pace! Hard to believe that the story is almost done, though. To top it off, I'm still very excited at showing you all what is still to come. I think that it'll be well worth the wait.**

 **Playlist:**

 **The Kiss: "Mount Fuji" by Hans Zimmer, Bryce Jacobs, and Martin Tillman from the film _Rush_**

 **Mind Meld: "Ground Zeroes" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game prologue _Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes_**

 **Quarian Brawl: "The Darklands" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**


	21. Chapter 18: Entropy's Half-Life

The nozzles embedded in the pillars of the decontamination checkpoint hissed ominously for less than a second before a fine, clear spray began to emit out of them in a misty jet, soaking me in sterility. I closed my eyes as I stood in the threshold between the hallway of the hospital and Nya's room, rotating around and around to the commands of the automated checkpoint to make sure that my entire body would be scoured clear of any germs that were clinging onto me. I winced slightly as I felt the chemicals attack my skin where it had been sliced open just half an hour prior, a hot and fizzing sensation now erupting upon the fresh cuts especially where blood still plastered onto me.

The ride back to Huerta had been a quiet affair, borne mostly as a result from the beating that I had just endured. There was no one else accompanying me, so it was not like I had an excuse to speak out loud, but I was in a melancholy nonetheless, my mouth pursed in a straight line. I had lots to ponder over since that little scrap near the C-Sec station. The revelation of Tavre/Sievra as a more direct antagonist, the weird and rubbery effects of the mind meld, the brutal clash between the quarian guards.

I had no shortage of topics to consider, that was for sure.

But why, oh why could I not get an average day in my life for once?

Upon departing the empty alleyway, I confess that I had been a little lax in cleaning up after myself, mostly because I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I had left the lone quarian body where it had fallen back near the station, the alien's own knife still embedded in his chest, surrounded in a pool of blood. His cohort had fallen hundreds of stories off the platform, so I believe it was safe to assume that he was dead as well. Sievra had run off without a trace, presumably back to Eyzn, which made me wish that I had had the foresight to place a tracker on her person so that she would lead me straight to the man himself before the scuffle had occurred. Goddamn, I was an idiot.

Maybe Eyzn would take me a little more seriously now that I was starting to push back. Of course, he would never admit his inferiority to my face, even if I managed to clasp my hands over his throat. The bastard would take pride in his refusal to budge up until the very end, I figured.

Since I had naught left to do on my little sojourn away from Nya, I had decided to go back to her hospital room to rest and clean myself up. I had glanced at my chronometer on the skycar back over and discovered, to my surprise, that the entire affair had taken an hour exactly – turns out I still could make good on my promises. Now, fancy that.

The decontamination checkpoint pinged in satisfaction and the doors opened to let me through. Sighing wistfully, I exited the cramped interior in relief.

But then I gave an abrupt start.

The first thing that I noticed upon entering the room was that Nya was no longer lounging in her bathtub, the spot that I had left her in previously. I had assumed that she would have wanted to stay in the water for as long as possible, so I had a brief moment of panic when my brain registered her absence in that area before my tracking eyes located Nya less than a second later, who was oddly positioned in a different part of the room than I had initially been expecting.

Next to her bed, her hospital gown thrown over her once more, Nya was oriented in a rather longing manner, her gaze fixated at the window that allowed a picturesque view onto the Presidium below. Warm light streamed in through the smoky, patterned glass, brightening up the room. Nya's face looked like it was aglow, her mouth lit up with a bright smile.

But there was something else about this that astonished me.

Nya was _standing up_.

"I'll be damned," I could only say.

In some way, I realized that this was impossible. There was no way that Nya should have had the strength in her legs to remain standing for any period of time. Not just a few hours ago she could not even hobble anywhere without my help!

Yet, as much of a contradiction as it was, I could not deny what I was looking at with my own eyes. I was spinning so many theories in my head as to how this was possible in the first place: her paralysis had only been temporary, the therapy had been more effective than anticipated, Nya had secretly injected high-octane drugs into her system while I wasn't looking—

On wobbling legs, a sign of her uneasiness, Nya slowly turned to face me, a smug glimmer nearly invisible in the corner of her eye – a sly declaration that she had smashed one of her goals way ahead of schedule and that she was reveling in anticipation of my reaction.

"I did it," she proclaimed proudly. "It's a little more difficult than it looks, but—" Nya abruptly paled as she took in my haggard appearance. "Um… Sam?"

"Yeah?" I responded breathlessly, still too surprised to fully realize what Nya was referring to yet. "My god, this is incredible," I quickly lost that other train of thought as I marveled over Nya's achievement, so very proud of her determination.

Nya was not ready to shift the conversation back to her just yet. She stumbled against the bed, more evidence of muscle atrophy, and had to throw out a hand for support. At the same time she gave a withering sigh and lifted an arm in resignation as she lifted herself up as she continued to hobble over to me. "Are you going to explain why you look like you've just gone through a paper shredder? I thought you said you were only going out for a bit."

Incredulous, I caught sight of my reflection in a nearby mirror and thought to myself that Nya had to really be tampering down her reactions because I looked like hammered shit right about now. My jacket and arms were all cut up – blood had streamed all the way down my arms to drip off my fingers – more blood was caked upon my forehead from a nasty gash near my hairline, and there was a new bruise on my forehead garnered when one of the quarians had decided to head-butt me. It was not like I had broken any bones or lost any limbs, but I still looked like a complete fright.

"Things got… a little out of hand," I pathetically explained as I tenderly felt my jaw in affirmation. Remembering my intrinsic goal in being here, I began to take off my jacket at the same time I kicked off my shoes.

Nya watched me hop over to the shower in the midst of shimmying out of my pants, struggling not to look too disappointed. She's always hated seeing me hurt, not that I could blame her for that. No one likes to see their spouse in such a state, even when this sort of lifestyle was getting to be the norm.

So much for being the ideal nuclear family.

" _Things got out of hand_ ," Nya repeated slowly before she shook her head, still listing onto the raised bed. "Damn it, Sam…"

"Nya, I'm begging you," I wrung my hands together anxiously, which must have looked very weird seeing as I was now only clad in my boxers and socks by now. " _Stop worrying_. I don't want you to be all hung up on this. I know I look like crap right now because I just got through a rough period, but I'm here right now – I'm fine, I'm still alive. I've still got all the same bits and pieces I had when I left. Please… just relax, okay?"

"A rough period?" Nya choked out as she looked at me, but it was not into my eyes. Instead she was gazing all over my torso, noting the wide assortment of scars that I had garnered while I had been in Eyzn's care. Raised lines ran across my chest, over my arms, and the white gash upon the side of my neck shone the most sinisterly. Add to the fact that part of my arms and chest were coated in blood from the previous fight, and it was indeed starting to look like I was not taking this all too seriously. Perhaps I was frightening Nya with my glib attitude in the wake of contradictory evidence: my wounds.

"Rougher than expected, but no more of this," I urged as I walked towards her. "No more talking about me. I honestly look worse than I feel." I placed my hands upon her shoulders, against the crinkly fabric of the gown that she wore. I then realized my mistake as I lifted one of my hands away as I had left a bloody handprint upon the gown itself. "Err…" I mumbled, "Well, maybe I'm not at my best, I'll give you that. I certainly wasn't trying to _look_ like this, if that was what you were thinking."

"I shudder to think how I'd react if this _was_ your intention," Nya responded as she looked at her ruined gown with some bemusement.

"Knowing you, quite oddly."

"Perish the thought and get yourself cleaned up. You're bleeding all over the room. Do I even want to know what happened?"

"Oh, and is there really the possibility that you _don't_ want to know?" I shot back with some discernible acid in my tone as I finally shed the last of my clothes (Nya only gave a slight reaction at this – it was nothing she had not seen before, anyway) and I quickly stepped into the shower. "I had an interesting encounter with your friend, Tavre. She was in a rather inhospitable mood, shall we say. That, and she also keeps poor company."

The shower was a glorified tube, to be blunt. It was a cramped contraption with all the usual accoutrements that one would expect to find in any shower, such as two dials to adjust the temperature and a shelf, except that this was apparently built to only fit one person, which meant that there was hardly any room to move around or stretch out as befitting a normal-sized person. I nearly banged my head on the ceiling of the damn thing and I'm not _that_ tall of a guy.

Well, at least the water was hot. I gave a soft yowl as it felt like all of the still-weeping cuts on my skin were all producing this boiling effect once the water came into contact with them, angry stings attacking me all at once. Dried blood quickly melted off of me in red rivulets and the searing sensation soon faded to a smolder. Eventually, the effect was so muted that I could ignore it easily as I concentrated on cleaning myself off while Nya stood outside, waiting for me.

"Wait…" Nya called over the hissing of water. "What does Tavre have to do with this? Were you _talking_ to her while you were gone?"

"Yeah, about that," I said as I stuck my head out past the curtain of the shower, my hair dripping wet. "Your friend Tavre's a real bitch, did you know that?"

Nya blinked, dumbstruck. "I'm… sorry?" she stammered.

"Actually, she's not called 'Tavre' at all. She's been lying to you the entire time. Apparently her real name is 'Sievra' and she works for Eyzn."

"That… that can't be. I don't believe it."

"Look, Nya, I have no reason to lie to you and I know that it's not hard to imagine that I always looked at 'Tavre' rather dubiously, but it makes perfect sense. She was the only one outside of our close circle of friends to know exactly where our apartment was, so when Eyzn and Vahl showed up there in their separate occasions without having much difficulty finding us, I figured that your asari friend might have been an inside source."

"Keelah," Nya wiped her forehead, already beginning to see the threads of the conspiracy connect. " _Of course_. I thought she was just trying to be nice to me. I… I actually thought that she was a friend." Horrified, she stared off into space. "How far does Eyzn's influence _go?_ "

"Hopefully not farther than what we've already uncovered," I groused as I flipped the shower off. Taking a moment to air dry, I finally stepped out of the tube and wrapped a towel around my waist after dabbing my body with it. "He's been very comprehensive with his revenge, unfortunately. Eyzn's acquired an eclectic group, all things considered, a four person squad including himself. Sievra was just one of those four. Vahl was another member before she died. The prime, Geth, is the last one. All very clever in their own ways. Skilled, too. When Sievra realized that she had been found out, she dropped the act entirely and tried to attack me, along with her guards. I had a little tussle, and as you can see, I didn't exactly come out of it scot-free."

I headed over to the couch and sat down heavily upon it. I was only going to take a minute to appreciate this stress-free moment before I was going to start fixing up my body, but Nya was ahead of me on that front. Heavily limping but walking all the same, she had collected a few small packages in her arms from the nearby cabinet – bandages and medi-gel from the looks of it – and she sat down with some difficulty next to me, as evidenced by the groan she elicited from the effort, but this laser-focused drive was returning back to her stare, an intensity that I only knew came out when Nya was incredibly fixated on one thing.

"Is she dead?" Nya asked as she began unwrapping a tube of medi-gel. "Tavre – I mean, Sievra?"

I shook my head as I reclined a bit on the couch. "She ran before I could stop her. Her guards did all this damage on her behalf."

"Lies upon lies, all for months," Nya scowled as she squeezed a dollop of medi-gel onto a finger. "Eyzn, Sievra, the prime, and Vahl. The four conspirators – now three remain. They all need to die."

"One thing at a time, Nya. We still need to find out where they are— _fuck!_ "

I yelped in surprise right at the moment when Nya had unexpectedly pressed the globule of medi-gel into one of the knife cuts upon my tricep. My fingers clenched into a fist instantaneously. This was so much worse than the shower – the burning here was now amplified, like it had been positioned through a magnifying lens. Bubbles felt like they were forming on my skin and popping. I growled through a clenched jaw, certain that my veins were popping out the sides of my neck.

The medi-gel was knitting my torn flesh back together before my eyes. A miraculous substance, the miracle element that we took for granted nowadays. The cut no longer wept fresh blood, yet the stinging persisted but that sort of pain would evaporate within an hour. No scab was left behind but the affected area on the skin was raised and reddened, like a bad sunburn. I would unquestionably receive a scar from the wound, but at least the medi-gel would help skip the worst parts of the healing process.

It still hurt like hell, though.

"Stop whining," Nya chided unsympathetically as she dutifully finished wiping off the last of the medi-gel off her finger onto me. "This can't possibly hurt any more than the moment when you received these cuts."

"On the contrary," I retorted as Nya began to rip swaths of bandages off of a roll, "I was pumped so full of adrenaline back then that I barely felt myself getting hurt."

As I was saying this, I popped the caps off of several bottles of pills that I then proceed to pop down my throat dry. These included a strong anti-inflammatory medication, a mild painkiller, and, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, an antihistamine.

Nya firmly stuck a square of gauze to the cut at my tricep before she wrapped a bandage around my arm. "You can certainly be a little quieter while I try to help you out, at least. You sound like I'm sawing off your arm or something."

"Yes, ma'am," I said sarcastically, but I set my jaw and let Nya work.

Nya's dexterous fingers limberly doled out appropriate amounts of medi-gel and bandages to all the cuts, scrapes, and bruises that had yet to be attended to – the wounds that I had most recently acquired. Every time that I tried to apply my own care to myself, Nya would slap my hands away, determined to do the honors. She sadly scraped her gaze over my torso, noting that my body was now heavily marred by all of the scars that I had accumulated at Eyzn's hands. Thin white lines crisscrossed my skin and Nya was probably imagining the amount of agony that I had gone through while her step-brother was carving me up with the blade of his knife.

"So many…" Nya murmured as she pressed her warm palm flat on my chest, near a cluster of scars. "They're all new."

"Hopefully I won't have to add any more to this collection," I sighed.

Nya's limpid eyes stared dolefully at me. "Is that something that you're willing to promise?"

"I wish I could, but you know I can't. I have no idea what's in store for the both of us. I would just be lying if I said otherwise."

"Sam, if you can't take care of yourself—,"

"Nya," I gripped her hand, preventing her from smearing medi-gel upon a bruise on my wrist, "from what's happened to us, I am not confident in saying that I won't ever be getting hurt again. I just can't say it. I'm not trying to worry you, but this," I gestured to my torso, "is what happened to me at the hands of a maniac. This is what we're facing. The cuts, broken bones, ruptured organs… of course I never want to go through this again but how can you expect me to promise that this isn't a possible outcome that could very well happen to the two of us?"

"It will just drive me crazy otherwise," Nya admitted as she wiped her hands on a nearby towel. "I guess I just need to hear it from you, whether it's real or not."

"But I can't in good conscience _say_ that to you. This is me being completely honest with you – something that I explicitly promised to do with you. Besides, being hurt is not the biggest thing on my mind right now. I have other things driving me crazy as well."

"…Such as?" Nya asked after some hesitation.

 _Yes, Sam, such as?_

I fumbled for a few seconds before giving a limp shrug. "Well… _us_ , for instance. That's what's driving me crazy most of all." I turned to face Nya, completely concentrated. "It's just that… things have been going so fast for us that I'm having trouble determining what's real anymore. Like… just today… when we kissed… I'm still fumbling around like I'm drunk. Nya… was that real?"

I studied Nya's face anxiously, waiting to see if she was going to hide a tic that would cause the bottom of my stomach to drop out again. Would that serve to lift me out of this fantasy that I thought I was perceiving? But in spite of my fears, that never came. She never took her eyes off of me. Never whispered a word to the contrary. Instead, she shyly bit her bottom lip and tilted her head in a curious fashion, keeping silent this whole time.

Then she slowly nudged her head towards me and gave me a light kiss on my lips.

It was quick – it lasted a whole lot shorter than our previous kiss, yet it said just as much in that amount of time. My breath stolen from me, I could only sit on the couch, transfixed, as Nya broke away from me as she moved to stand on her still shaking legs. I had no idea what she was about to do, so it came as a surprise to me, as in I was hit right out of left field, when Nya reached down to the hem of her gown and, in one fluid motion, pulled the entire covering over the top of her head and discarded it behind her, leaving the crinkly fabric crumpled upon the ground.

She was wearing nothing underneath.

Of course I was staring up at her like a moron, my jaw half hanging open. There was this stunned silence that had permeated the both of us, a kind of fog that we were unable to shake off together. It was not like that seeing Nya naked was something new to me – hell, I had seen her in such a state frequently over the past few days alone, but not when she was in this kind of mood. She was determined, her mind set, and that made her _elegant_. She _glowed_ like this, limber and softly toned with muscle. Her curves were supple, giving her that definitive female shape. Nya stared at me with desire, already beginning to pant, and I realized that I too was starting to feel a reaction begin to stir within me and my skin felt prickly, like I had been exposed to a static charge.

I could not muster a word to say in my paralysis as I was hopelessly ogling Nya as she stood over me, not that she would give me time to speak. Quickly, she knelt back down and gently pushed my shoulders down on the couch as she moved to straddle me. My towel fell open and Nya groaned longingly as she saw me. She positioned herself over me and my hands naturally came up to her bare sides. Nya gasped as she felt my desirous touch upon her skin and she immediately bent down to kiss me a whole lot more intensely.

Our lips met again and this time there was a vibrant energy that passed between the two of us, the wonder of relief. There was barely any delicacy, just lust. Grand, infectious, overwhelming lust. Our mouths were open as we hungrily dueled tongues, the familiar taste of my wife flooding back to my brain in a choking heat. Her body was now nearly lying entirely flat against me – I could feel her stomach quivering against mine and her nipples rubbing anxiously upon my chest. My arms rose up to slowly wrap around Nya's back, drawing her even closer, wanting more of her warm presence.

With a start, Nya suddenly halted the kiss, a string of drool briefly trailing from our mouths. She began to stammer, her eyes racing everywhere, as a hand rose to her mouth in shock.

"I'm… I'm so sorry, Sam," she blabbered. "I… I should have asked you before I did anything. Do…" she took a deep breath, "…do you want this?"

She still had the wherewithal to think selflessly. I guess that notion had never truly been stamped out of her.

It was hard not to love that.

My hands cupped Nya's cheeks lovingly, a smile cracking my face. "More than anything," I told her.

Reassured, Nya spluttered a nervous laugh before she was taken again by a fervor and she dropped back down to kiss me once more. Her breasts were mashed against my body and my hands slid up and down her back, from her shoulder blades down to her bottom. Nya's own hands were pulling my head up toward her, as if she was trying to assimilate me into her body. Her skin was ablaze with a furious heat, and I could feel all her muscles trembling as her excitement shifted into overdrive, completely consumed and obsessed with her desires.

Nya instinctively began to grind her hips against me, already taken by the need to have me inside her. We did not satisfy that urge just yet, as we were both utterly concentrated on our savage kissing, our lips sliding over each other in a torrid frenzy.

It was madness. Pure, blind madness. There was no rhythm to our kisses – we simply acted on the basest glimmer of a thought, completely beholden to the whims of the chemicals saturating our brains. We craved the contact, the fury, the lust. It was incredible – love indescribable. Nya was now so overwhelmed as our warm bodies pressed against each other and she had to stop kissing my lips lest she fall into a hormone-addled coma. To satiate herself, she groaned intensely as she began licking and kissing at the long scar upon my neck, a gesture of peace and calm to dissuade the reminders of pain that the sight of my wounds brought. Her hands kneaded at other scars upon my chest and Nya was soon plying them with kisses as well while I lounged on the couch, murmuring in content from the attention that she was giving me.

Nya soon moved back to licking at my neck while her hands were tugging at the hair on my head. Her hot tongue, wet and gentle, traced the lines of scars there, retreading paths that steel had previously torn open. My blood had sprayed into the air back then, but now it was pumping furiously in my body, my heart powerfully giving me a kick as I found myself losing track of time with my naked wife atop me.

Soon, I felt Nya's hand reach down right about the moment when she had to force herself to stop kissing me, even for a few seconds. I shifted my hips to meet her fingers and I gave a shudder as I felt her warm hand encircle me. Nya then guided me into position as she shifted to angle herself correctly. There was this radiating fire wafting from the both of us, and I soon felt a slickness as I slowly pushed up while Nya carefully lowered herself down.

We both moaned as we each felt the other through our connection.

Eager to proceed, Nya immediately started to move upon me, but she went slowly, deliberately. Very eager to draw out her pleasure. My hands naturally gravitated toward her hips after briefly cupping her slim waist, holding her against me. She was already wet, completely aroused. Her mouth opened as she start to rasp, a slight choking sound as she struggled not to become overwhelmed with sensation.

I just smiled, overjoyed to see Nya so happy. Her fingers dug into the skin of my chest and my hands similarly rose to cup her soft breasts. That elicited a cry from Nya as my thumbs brushed her nipples, her body being assaulted from several sensitive areas at once. Even now, she was losing the slow tempo she had set in the beginning. It had been too much, too fast for her. Her body violently thrashed once, twice, and finally a third time as she croaked out in the middle of an orgasm. She started to drool. Her flat belly puffed out in shallow breaths before slowing to a satisfied speed after a few seconds.

Nya sagged, nearly listless, the strength to remain on top sapped from her. I could still feel her hips desperately nudging, still wanting to continue. I was still possessed with the same need, so I let a little bit of strength rise up to reside within my body, shifting the impetus of guidance over into my court. Nya sensed this change and a gleaming smile beckoned.

" _Yes!_ " she uttered hoarsely.

Gripping her back carefully, I pushed off on a leg and kept my hips as stable as possible as I slowly rotated to bring Nya lying upon her back on the couch. Now, I was the one on top and I wasted no time in keeping up the pace that Nya had originally set and I soon was struggling to maintain my composure as I repeatedly thrusted myself deeply and slowly into her body.

Nya's head was thrown back, her eyes closed, as she cried out in pleasure. She was in a world of delight, so indescribably happy as she _felt_ me within her. Her hands grabbed at my sides while my own arms were ramrod straight, my own hands sunken into the cushions on either side of Nya's head. The pink of my skin melded against the cool gray of Nya's, a clash of disparate colors so apparent, yet so insignificant at the same time.

Peach mixed with ash.

Human bonded with quarian.

Alien mating with alien.

Who the fuck cares?

I amplified my intensity, savoring my wife's moans as she detected my mutual desire. If anything, her body seemed to heat up even more.

"Oh…" she could only say. "Oh… Sam… _yes_ …"

Now it was my turn to dip down for a kiss. Nya breathlessly responded, her content murmurs mashed against the inside of my mouth as our lips rejoined. We moved as one, felt as one, _loved_ as one. It was like we had become a singularity inside this very room. As our tongues touched each other, a new realm of sensation opened up to us as if a light had abruptly began to shine upon our nude forms.

All of these emotions, having previously been locked away, rushed out of me in a flood. The past had been forgotten, all the bad parts at least. Petty fights and insensitive words were to be discarded. None of that mattered anymore. What truly did matter was right before my eyes: the woman that I had never stopped loving.

I wanted her and I knew she wanted me. Even simply knowing you are wanted and loved is enough fuel to make the brightest fire burn.

Nya's watery eyes shone joyfully. Even I had to take a second to wipe my own eyes free. Nya caught this movement and gave a trembling laugh, realizing that we were both completely taken with the other in that point in time. Our similarly bruised and bandaged bodies continued to move together, all caught up in our lovemaking.

Our lips slowly separated from our last kiss, our wet skin peeling from the other at a torturously lethargic pace. I felt my breath catch as my nostrils flared, bringing to me Nya's musky scent. It was a dark scent, cloying and humid. It stuck to the back of my throat as a raw taste began to inhabit my tongue, dredged up purely in my imagination. Her excitement lingered in my mouth and I felt myself quiver inside her. Had I the notion to say a few words to her, that moment had come and gone, for I was quickly overcome with a furious craving, my mind having melted into a puddle from the touch of this quarian.

Very delicately, I wrapped my hands around Nya's lower back as I began to lift myself up, taking her with me. Soon, the two of us were both upright and I adjusted myself on the couch so that I was now oriented in a sitting position, with my feet now flat on the floor. Nya was still facing me and I was still inside her. Her legs had now wrapped around my lower torso, just a couple inches above my hips. The sides of her knees squeezed my lower ribcage tenderly and we both gave grunts as we adjusted to this new position, finding the angle to be very pleasurable.

Very soon, we started to escalate our pace as we became entwined in the other's warm skin. Whereas before we had been going slowly and passionately, we were starting to get a little more daring in our antics. Nya was moaning loudly as she bounced up and down on my lap and I was stifling my own groans by burrowing my head between her breasts, my tongue darting out and tenderly caressing her flesh.

Nya gave a short cry and suddenly grabbed my head so that we might come back together for a furious kiss. We started to double our efforts, enjoying the sounds that we were making together. Our lips were sliding over the other, our tongues were constantly seeking stimulation, and we were vying for control the more that we grappled for domination in our kissing.

Drool coated our chins and saliva specked our necks from our desire. We gave no more thought to our actions anymore. This was just crazed, animal lust. Completely unfocused. Purely reactionary. The best kind of high one could imagine, better than any shot of whisky, toke of a blunt, or any consumption of Vicodin, Percocet, hydrocodone, Ritalin, Adderall, Diazepam, OxyContin, Valium, or Xanax all at once. A complete hormonal deluge that had driven us to sexual insanity.

And what a joyous insanity it was.

Sometimes it felt good to be crazy.

I could feel Nya's belly press up against mine as she took deep, heaving breaths. Her breasts were still squashed against my chest and our bodies were completely coated with sweat, turning the both of us slick. Our hips continued to push against each other, sending ripples of bliss echoing throughout our bodies. After half a minute, Nya's fingers were desperately digging into my back, and her breaths were beginning to quicken. She opened her mouth and rested her teeth upon my shoulder but did not bite down.

"I…" she tried to say, "I…"

Nya soon gave up trying to speak for she quickly lost her inhibitions once more. While she was nibbling on my shoulder, I too was occupying myself in multiple ways by lightly making a trail across her neck with my tongue. I could feel the veins in her throat throbbing, her esophagus quivering with joy. Her skin was burning hot to the touch and I buried my head in the crook of her neck.

Awed by this attention, Nya started to erupt in peals of astonished laughter, a kind of joy that could only be described as hysteria. Her voice was breathy, coming in rasps, and I felt a powerful urge start to unravel at this wordless declaration of happiness.

Clutching me tightly, Nya took all of two seconds to appraise my face lovingly before she forcefully kissed me for the final time. Our lips remained locked, our moans crashing together. Simultaneously hugging, caressing, and kissing each other, we gasped as our sweaty, naked bodies writhed as one in a sensuous dance. Nya's muffled cries began to escalate, coming in quick bursts… higher… higher… and higher.

Until finally…

Her lower body gave a fierce clench upon me. The rest of her felt like it was melting in my arms as every muscle loosened at once. Nya mewled quietly and fell limp against me as her eyes momentarily rolled into the back of her head.

I collapsed in a fitful heap after that, my own end having come soon after Nya's.

The two of us were still upright but listless, leaning upon the other, breathing hard in ragged gasps. We remained like this for a couple minutes, just calming down and allowing our heart rates to drop a couple of notches. Eventually, I leaned back upon the couch, finally separating from Nya, but she was there alongside me and she fell atop my body as I laid myself on the couch.

I fidgeted in place, frowning for a bit, as I began to perceive for the first time the itchy fabric of the couch as it seemed to scratch my back.

"This isn't a very comfortable couch," I grumbled out loud as I continued to adjust myself until I managed to find a place where I was bothered the least by the fabric.

"Complain, complain," Nya mocked as she reached over me to grab a bottle of water atop the counter. She quickly unscrewed the lid and guzzled about half its contents, smacking her lips in contentment, before offering the bottle to me. I took it gratefully and drained the last of the water after chugging it in four long gulps. Water was ubiquitous to all species – one didn't need to distinguish between levo or dextro versions as anyone could drink it freely without complaints. I lobbed the empty bottle over to a trash can now that we were done with it – I missed of course, but that was hardly worth griping over.

I then dropped a blanket down from where it hung upon the back of the couch so that it would cover our lower torsos. We were now naked from the waist up and still breathing hard, sweat clinging to our bodies. Exhausted, Nya laid her head gently upon my chest as she nudged her body further into me, creating an enormous zone of warmth that kept me from feeling a chill in this dry room. Her elongated six toes nudged my feet, causing me to look down at her to find her smiling up at me – a very simple, smitten smile.

"So," I began as my arm wrapped around her back to hold her close against me, fully cognizant of how precious and fragile her life was, "what's going to happen to us now?"

"Now?" Nya yawned as she tiptoed her fingers up my chest. "I think… that things are going to get less lonely for us in the future."

"Is that a fact?"

"A guarantee," Nya emphasized as she slid forward to provide a light peck upon my lips. "Unless… you feel different about that."

In response, I softly planted my hand upon Nya's cheek, handling her as delicately as one would to fine china. She murmured contently and gingerly kissed my thumb and palm, reveling in the deliberate attentiveness of my actions.

"You really think, after what we just did, that I could walk away from this so easily?" I chuckled. "My god, woman. That just doesn't happen out of nowhere, you know."

"I was just asking to make sure," Nya pouted, her cheeks faintly growing red.

"Look, Nya," I said as I readjusted my position. "I know that I've been a moron lately. I've admitted as much until I've been blue in the face. But I would have to be the biggest moron in the galaxy to turn my back on all the progress we've made in the last few days. Can you understand where I'm coming from? I could never feel differently about wanting to be with you."

Nya didn't answer immediately but instead shook her head, showing teeth in a grin. "You are such a dope," she chided longingly. She kissed my hand again and felt the bones of my palm tenderly. "Way too many fingers in humans," she murmured in abstract thought.

"Not this again," I groaned as I fell back upon the bed.

Nya wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, indicating her mirth she got from teasing me.

Feeling a brief spike of annoyance, I reached down and grabbed Nya's sides, making her squeal from being tickled, before pulling her towards me so that we could lie down together, face to face. I caressed her face longingly, studying her milky eyes with awe. Our fingers knotted together and our bodies squirmed ever so closer against one another.

"Maybe soon," I said, "we'll be able to do this again, only on a soft mattress and with fluffy blankets instead of on a crappy couch. But it's not just for this that I want us to be whole again. I miss what we were and I'd like to get a glimpse of that once more. If that's what you want as well then I will be completely dedicated to that goal, one hundred percent. And that," I gave Nya a peck of my own, "is _my_ guarantee."

I'd like to think that Nya was going to respond to my saccharine promise with something just as meaningful (and corny) due to her rapidly broadening grin, when life decided to throw a wrench into our impromptu plans. It started when the chime to the door suddenly sounded, causing the both of us to jolt on the couch and look towards the doorway. Right away, the decontamination checkpoint was beginning to fill with a medicated sour mist, obscuring the people just a barrier away from entering.

We apparently had visitors.

"Aw, shit," I sighed as I fell into a languid position. "I knew I should have asked Sagan not to allow anyone in."

"Sam!" a horrified Nya whispered as she realized what was about to happen and how the people would react once they saw her. "I'm… I'm naked!"

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

" _Sam!_ "

"Nya, I can't solve the world's problems," I shrugged sarcastically. "I think you're just going to have to… well, cover up as best you can. Unless you think you can get your suit back on in the next ten seconds?"

" _No, no, no, no, no, no!_ " Nya was uttering to herself in a panic. She was all aflutter, caught up in deciding what to do as her mind pulled her in a dozen different directions at once. In the end, with time running out on the clock, the best course of action that she deemed was to pull the blanket all the way up and to bury her head against me so that she would not be able to look at the people coming in.

Resigned to my fate, I simply stayed where I was, already somewhat amused as to how this was going to play out.

In moments, the decontamination chamber dinged, indicating that it was safe for our guests to enter now that they had been sterilized satisfactorily, and Rie and Chandler lumbered awkwardly through the narrow doorway, brushing their clothes free of any chemical traces, not noticing us just yet.

"Hey guys," Rie said absentmindedly as she continued to attend to herself, "thought that you would maybe want to see— _whoa!_ "

Quick spurts of gibberish emitted from Rie's throat as she finally looked up and saw the two of us lying down on the couch together in our states of undress. The blanket was thrown over us so that no one could see anything, but it was still pretty clear as to what the connotations of being caught in such a position would entail. That, and the sweat still clinging to my forehead was painfully apparent.

"Oh, good god," Chandler similarly uttered as he tried to look away in embarrassment, humming to himself as a method of self-distraction.

"Hey guys!" I gave a cheerful wave in a faux tone of jubilation. "You going to make yourselves comfortable?"

Nya punched me in the ribs, hard. "Don't you dare, you bastard!" she sharply uttered, trying not to smile but only from the shock of being completely embarrassed.

"Ummmm…" Rie blanked for a while before she shook herself back to the present. "I think that… we might have come at a wrong time. It wasn't like we had anything important to talk about anyway."

"You think?" I repeated in amusement. I then nudged Nya, fully knowing that I was going to pay for my actions. "Don't be rude. Say hi to our friends."

" _I'm going to kill you!_ " Nya mumbled into my shoulder in between disbelieving peals of laughter.

Rie awkwardly gave a wave for Nya as she and Chandler started edging back to the door. "So…" she said, "…I guess this really _does_ mean that you guys are back to normal, huh?"

"Yes it does," I admitted without a second of hesitation before I started waving my hand to usher them out, now sensing that Nya was starting to actually be annoyed with me. "Now, please get out of our room."

"Still, I'm very happy that the two of you—,"

"I said get the hell out of our room!" I said a little louder as I lightly lobbed a tissue box somewhat in Rie's direction. It harmlessly bounced off the wall and Rie took that as her cue to shut up and leave, but not without shooting the both of us a wry smirk before she turned and left through the door.

I was nearly about to settle back down when all of a sudden, now that there was no one else in the room anymore, Nya rose from where she was and began pummeling my chest with quick, jabbing blows, fighting hard to keep her incredulous grin locked away.

"Hey, ow! Ow! Ow!" I yelped with laughs of my own. "I'm still healing, woman!"

"You stupid, stupid, stupid idiot! Stupid man!" Nya emphasized each time she hit me, but her blows were nowhere near hard enough to actually hurt me – she was playing up her anger just to get her point across. "You think you can get away with embarrassing me that easily?"

"At the cost of my health?!" I continued to chortle as I threw up my arms to defend myself, but Nya would have none of it as she was now darting her hands in and out of my defenses to smack me wherever she could lay her hands on me.

"I technically _died_ , mister, so don't you hang your own woes over me!"

I then caught her wrists in mid-air and she struggled lightly, both trying to break away and already capitulated at her situation. She gave me a long, exasperated look before I raised my head up to give her a gentle kiss. She did not even resist at all after that. I just couldn't help myself; I was very turned on by her playful aggressiveness.

Perhaps this sort of effect was exactly what Nya had in mind when she had begun to attack me in her halfhearted manner. But whether she intended it to play out this way or not, she was not resisting at the overall outcome. Nor did she resist when I flipped her on the couch, throwing the blanket off of us, so that I was on top of her so that I could press myself against her limber frame while our kisses kept intensifying. If anything, she was responding just as strongly, her eyes now closed shut in bliss while her hips started to push up towards me.

"You up for another go at things?" Nya arced an eyebrow playfully, her faux anger forgotten.

I briefly looked down at my waist to confirm. "I might need a few more minutes to get things started, but no matter. I know of other ways to occupy my time."

With a manic grin, I kissed Nya on the cheek before I started to squirm my way down her body, my lips and tongue making a wet trail starting from her neck down to her breasts, over her belly and cute navel, to finally between her legs. I kissed her strong thighs to tease her, noting that she was already glistening with arousal – temptation for me to keep going, I see. Nya writhed on the couch, impatient, her lips parted in a longing gasp as I inched my head down so slowly that she was starting to ache in need.

"Don't worry," I smiled up at Nya, my breath tickling her skin. "I'll be gentle."

"You always are," Nya sighed as her hands began to ruffle my hair.

Soon she was starting to undulate as I lovingly attended to her, keeping things going at a slow and steady pace. Her stomach was heaving in arousal and her toes were helplessly curling from the wonderful treatment I was giving her.

However, Nya gave a frown just for a moment as she briefly adjusted herself in a better position. "You're right. This couch _is_ uncomfortable."

Such distractions were quickly forgotten as she cried out in pleasure, her thighs tightening around my head.

* * *

It would not behoove me to say that the rest of the day as well as most of the next would play out in a languid fashion. If I were to mention that Nya and I had every intention of making things as uncomplicated and as easygoing as possible, then that would technically be the truth of the matter. 'Technically' being the key word.

Reality wound up playing out much, much differently.

Whatever notions that Nya or I might have had with regards to how we should approach our relationship from this point forward, it was summarily derailed by what I would describe as a convenient as well as an astonishing symmetry between our basest desires. More like carnal desires, actually. It turned out we were too weak-willed to cram these instincts down for logic and reason to take over, so what happened was that the primal sides of our brains completely controlled us for quite an inordinate amount of time.

Well… we weren't exactly complaining about the hows and whys of what we were doing. Nope, we were definitely enjoying ourselves, the sick deviants that we were.

Apparently, after being separated from each other for almost an entire year and that we had not had sex with each other in that amount of time, it should have been fairly obvious that we were itching to make up for lost time. One ten-minute quickie was not going to satiate things whatsoever – we had to be more devoted than that. So, we continued to show 'devotion' to each other with the nagging expectation that we would get this rampant lust out of system most likely within the next hour or so.

But an hour passed and we were still grabbing at the other in a haze.

Then another hour flew by with the same result.

And another.

And another.

Then we took a nap…

…only to wake up after a couple hours and to resume the action where we left off. Absolute insanity.

I was only partially regretting my decision to take sildenafil somewhere in the middle of our lovemaking so that my sexual libido could be sustained for longer than usual. I guess my mindset was that Nya would be the one to wear out first and that I would at least be there to meet her level of intensity the entire time. But Nya never seemed to tire and my libido was not decreasing. Not that I wanted it to decrease, but I was sort of locked into having sex with my wife for hours and hours on end.

At least until one of us could go no further. Little did I know that the both of us were too determined to give up so easily.

There were worse fates to be tied to.

The overall point was that we simply spent a frankly irrational amount of time having sex, showcasing our physical love the best way we could. Whether we envisioned this to be an official apology for our treatment of each other in the past, or that we were simply killing time by banging our brains out, or that we genuinely enjoyed pleasuring the other this way, the real conclusions were a bit muddled on that front.

There was probably no spot in the hospital room that went untouched in our wild throes. The couch, the bed, even the shower was subject to our passionate intercourse. The shower was the most interesting spot because it was barely big enough to fit one person alone, so it was kind of awkward yet intoxicating as we had to position ourselves in a standing pose to be most comfortable, all while the spray of the shower was raining down upon us, turning our bodies slippery as we slid against each other in frenzied thrusts, our lips locked together the entire time. But since our venue was cramped to begin with, I actually got elbowed in the head a couple of times on accident, knocking me silly and resulting in the both of us cracking up for a minute or two in helpless hysterics.

The levity was good. It helped dispel this otherwise serious atmosphere that had been building ever since we had woken this morning. Nya was behaving more and more like her old self: cheerful and intense, supportive and unyielding.

But there was still a fleeting notion tugging at the back of my mind, one that I could not shake. Even when I was holding Nya close to me as we slept for a bit, keeping her protected and safe against my body, I could not help but feel a bit of trepidation, like this entire day was merely a dream and that I would wake any second now.

Yet I did not seem to wake. The day kept going on and on. Sensation lingered upon me in burning waves, in prickling dewdrops. This energy that I had… it could not be the byproduct of even my most lucid imaginings. Maybe this was really happening, no matter how crazy my life felt now.

Eventually, we finally did tire after one last session on Nya's bed the next morning. I still felt no signs that I would be roused from this wonderful trip, making me believe that I was solidly soaked into this humid reality along with the love that radiated off of my wife. We laid next to each other, atop the sheets, as we fought to catch our breath. The sex had been incredible, blindingly so. We had proceeded at different speeds to switch things up before it got too stale. Our hands and mouths had been everywhere on our bodies, leaving no area of skin untouched.

Our exertions had taken their toll on the both of us. Nya was a drooling, quivering mess next to me while I was numb below the waist and the receptor of a massive headache. Our bodies _throbbed_ with a slow agony, but we were grateful for this pain. It helped remind us that we were alive.

Next to me, in the corner of my eye, I saw a mass of gray skin tremble. Nya groaned as she shut her eyes and clasped her hands to her temples. "Ugh," she could only muster.

"You said it," I similarly mumbled.

" _Oww_ ," she continued to moan. "Ow, my head. I know I haven't been drinking lately but if I did I would swear that I was drunk or that this is the worst hangover I've ever had."

"Post-coital hangover. That's a thing."

"Is it?" Nya raised her head, incredulous. "Or are you just making that up?"

"Nope, totally real. It's the level of exertion that causes the headache, you see, partly because we're dehydrated or that our neck and facial muscles have been contracting so much—"

"You're cute when you explain this stuff to me," Nya giggled. She then turned her body so that she was partly laying atop me, a glow definitely enveloping her as a warm smile was etched on her face. She began teasing the hairs on my face and I basked in her touch, especially of her heat as her smooth skin became all the more apparent to my senses.

But Nya seemed to sense something, perhaps it was a sort of aura I was giving off, because I quickly felt her stiffen against me. I cracked an eye open to find her staring at me with concern.

"What's wrong?" Nya asked before I could say a word.

Momentarily caught off guard, all I could do was shrug. "I don't know," I mumbled. "It's just that… yesterday was wonderful. A day that I could probably not have believed was possible. But there's just been something… it sounds kind of stupid… but…"

"Tell me," Nya tenderly nudged my shoulder.

"I just… are you wondering that we might be going too fast?"

Nya blinked. "What do you mean?" the quarian asked.

"I mean that after all that we've done and said, even after the sex, I'm kind of struggling to catch up. So many moments… so little time for me to just _process_ everything. Just a week ago, if you recall, you _despised_ me. Now here we are, all seemingly back to normal. Is that healthy for us to flip-flop like that so quickly?"

Nya breathed a soft curse as she began looking over me, off into space near the window pane. "Damn it. I probably shouldn't have jumped you like that yesterday, then. This wasn't what I intended. The last thing I ever wanted to do was confuse you, Sam."

"No, no!" I protested as I hugged Nya closer. "Please don't apologize for that. I wanted that just as much as you did. I'm not confused because of you, Nya. I just want to make sure if everything is really okay between us and that… and that this isn't just some fling."

"Sam…" Nya sighed as she propped herself up on an elbow, a bemused expression on her face. "If this was really a fling, one would think that I kind of put a whole lot more effort into such a thing than necessary. If I really felt so little about you, I would not have bothered to draw out yesterday evening beyond fifteen minutes at most. I kept going because I _cared_ , because that was what I wanted to do with _you_."

"So it's really that easy for you? You honestly don't have any reservations?"

"None that I can think of," Nya shrugged after taking a moment to ponder. "Just dispel the notion that I don't want to go any further with this, because it's _not true_. I _want_ you to stay with me. I want," she took a breath, "you to come back with me. Move back in, you know. Back into our apartment. Because…" she simpered, "…in case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of fond of you."

Maybe it really was the simplest thing to imagine. I reacted to the request with a brimming chuckle, the lights of the room beginning to take on a washed out color. The smile refused to be suppressed and I arched my back in a stretch dredged up from the relief that was aching to be free of my bones.

To have my future set in stone once more. It was better than I ever could have hoped for.

"Never refuse a request from a lady," I smirked as I settled into Nya's embrace.

* * *

 _Four hours later - Nya_

Nya was absolutely besotted.

She lay back alone on the bed, her husband having temporarily left to run an important errand, giving her the entire room to herself. She had her hospital gown back on again, rather begrudgingly though, but she was positioned so that the artificial light of the Presidium was streaming in through the blinds, warming her skin and making her prickle with sensation.

What a feeling it was to be out of her suit like this, she mused to herself. Such a torturous dry spell, now finally upheaved in a deluge of emotion and desire to be expressed in the most intimate of physical ways. She still ached all over, but Nya would not trade this feeling for anything else in the galaxy right now.

She was in love again, madly so.

Nya was replaying the entirety of the events from yesterday evening to this morning in her mind, a big, dumb smile permanently etched on her face. There was much to glean from that period that had been very enjoyable, but not just on the purely physical level. There had been this gigantic release of emotional tension that had occurred back then, causing the overbearing fog that had clouded her mind to begin to dissipate, enabling her to see clearly.

 _So…_ Nya thought as she reclined upon the bed, _kind of like a… mental orgasm?_ It sounded dumb in her head – she sure as hell was not going to ask Sam if _that_ was a thing. He would probably just laugh and she would get embarrassed, but she did know that she would have ample opportunities to exact her revenge sooner or later on him if he did make the poor decision to have a laugh at her expense.

She still was not going to mention this line of thought, though.

Despite all that, there was a subtle inclination in the back of Nya's head that was clamoring for more stimulation from her husband. Amazingly, she still did not feel satiated. Nya was astonished that her sexual instincts had not been lessened at all since this morning. Either her libido had gone completely through the roof or maybe she still had not yet reached the level of satisfaction that required her full attention.

Nya ground her back teeth. She was just going to have to stuff this feeling down.

She knew that she should not feel like her desires had gone unrequited. After all, she and Sam had probably acted out three weeks' worth of their normal rate of intimacy in a span of about eight hours. More than enough to tire out most living beings. And they had not exactly kept their style all that simple throughout that timeframe – they had actively gone out of their way to switch things up before one of them tired of a certain position, or if they wanted to try something new with their partner by doling out pleasure in a one-way exchange like oral sex, for example. Definitely nothing to complain about in terms of how intense their passion had gotten.

It was just that, Nya noted sadly, she had been so foolish to push this person away, all because he had been gallant to a fault. She would have understood if Sam had wanted to treat her with a little more indifference, but she was actually surprised when she discovered that Sam was just as eager to pick up things where they had left off. He was not delusional, that man, just… relieved. Relieved that no more misunderstandings stood between them and that they could finally make progress without devolving into anger.

 _Keelah_ , Nya thought, _I'm going to be apologizing to that man for the next decade because of what I had said to him before._

At the very least, she had more than enough mental imagery to keep her occupied while Sam was off doing… whatever it was that he was doing. It was surprisingly easy to reminisce about those tender moments when Sam had been very close to her while they had been tangled in a naked heap and sweating. She still remembered the naughty words that he had whispered into her ear, which had caused tingles to emit all across her skin and for her heart to flutter wildly as her limbs had melted into jelly.

The simultaneous nature of seemingly sharing a body and mind while making love was simply addicting to Nya. It was pretty much hopeless, but Nya could not help herself.

She was just too damn happy.

Her attention was then drawn to the doorway as it began hissing in response to a person having entered the decontamination chamber.

Lo and behold, just the man she had been thinking about.

* * *

 _Sam_

I can certainly attest that it was so nice to enter a room and to see Nya have on a sincere expression as she looked in my direction. It was just relieving to know that I no longer had anything to fear with her in my presence anymore. Things had changed, but they had changed all the way back to normalcy.

Just the way I wanted it to be.

I returned the smile but I'll admit that a bit of frost resulted in me having a somewhat melancholy look that Nya definitely noticed, as her grin faltered a bit as well.

"Good to see that you're up," I said as I approached where she was lying in bed. "Not feeling crappy, are you?"

"Better than I was yesterday," Nya said. "Took some anti-inflammatory meds just to keep the swelling down. I'm still feeling the effects of my temporary 'death.'"

"I can imagine it not being all that comfortable."

"Just a little bit," Nya chuckled before she appraised me thoughtfully. "You look like you have something on your mind, Sam."

"I wear it that plainly?"

"Quite plainly, actually."

I chewed my lower lip, unsure of how I wanted to handle this initially but I figured that it was probably best to say it straight out, damn the consequences. "You don't miss anything, do you? There _is_ something on my mind, Nya, and I wanted to discuss it with you right away—"

"Please, no more self-loathing," she groaned.

I gave a start at being interrupted. "Wait, what? No, of course not. What I was going to say, _before_ you interjected—" Nya gave me a face at that, "—that your father is waiting out in the hall."

Nya said up straight on the bed as if she had been prodded with a red-hot poker. Her face turned ashen and she instinctively clutched her hospital robe closer to her body. " _Iroa?_ " she uttered in horror. "No… no. Get him out of here. I don't want to talk to that bastard!"

"Wait, wait, wait," I urged as I leaned forward to gently grasp Nya's wrist. "Hold on a second. Before you go making declarations, just listen to me for a bit."

"Why is _he_ here?!" Nya hissed as she started to thrash against me in defiance. "I told him not to come near me, not since Rannoch!"

"That's the thing, Nya. I invited him here."

It was hard to tell if Nya was more disappointed in me or more shocked at being in such close proximity to her father. Her mouth twisted into different shapes as she tried to think of something to say, her brain failing to justify this last piece of information that I had just doled onto her.

"What," Nya began flatly, "mad purpose would you have for bringing that man over? How could you possibly look him in the eye and do this?!"

I pressed a finger into Nya's shoulder as a way to calm her down through the firm contact. "Because I owe him, Nya. I never did explain myself fully to you on that front. I only escaped Eyzn because of Iroa. He's pretty much the only reason I managed to come back at all."

Nya's mouth closed shut and she looked at me in a totally different light. I could tell that the gears were cantankerously cranking away in her head, spinning wildly as her initial expectations were all disintegrating with the revelation of this new logic.

"But… but I thought…" Nya tried, "…I thought that Sagan was the one who got you out."

I shook my head. "Sagan helped, but that was only because the entire plan was Iroa's idea from the start. He deliberately sought Sagan out and they came up with the plan to rescue me."

"I still don't understand why he would do such a thing like that. I… I don't know how he could have changed."

I gave Nya's hand a squeeze. "Isn't it obvious?" I asked her.

Nya, confused, shook her head almost timidly.

I nodded my head sagely. "It's because he did it for you. He finally realized how he could make his daughter happy, I guess, and that was by returning me to you when I could not do such a thing myself. He could have left me to rot, yet he did the exact opposite." Nya seemed to be processing this information still and I gave a quick glance back toward the doorway. "Look, Nya, I brought Iroa here because I felt that he deserved one last chance with you. He really did go above and beyond to make sure that I got out from Eyzn's clutches alive. If you really don't want to talk with him, just say the word and I'll send him away. He's not going to come in this room until you give your permission, he knows that. With that in mind, do you still want him to leave?"

It was painstakingly obvious that Nya was toying with the idea of spurning Iroa, to leave him in the dust, but at her very core, Nya was not that cruel. Her moral center was very much aligned with the desire to do good and the galactic sense of karma was urging its logical path upon her very cortex. She considered the bedsheets, then the window, and finally me before she took a deep breath and gave a slow blink.

"All right," she sighed. "He can come in. _But_ —," she pointed a finger, "he's not going to look at me like this."

To emphasize that point, she grabbed at the curtain partition and swung it forward, causing her to be hidden away from view as the partition traveled on the overhead railing and surrounded the bed. I could still get a faint outline of her face through the thin fabric, but it was obscured enough that any average outsider would have no idea what they would be looking at.

It would be pointless to try and bargain with her further. At least she let herself be somewhat amicable to the idea of talking to her father. Hell, besides using the curtain to hide herself from Iroa, she had pretty much agreed to this encounter entirely.

I crossed my fingers and hoped this wouldn't end awkwardly.

Sagan, who was still standing guard outside, would receive a message from me indicating for him to let Iroa in. In fifteen seconds the decontamination cycle was doing its work as I now saw hints of golden fabric peek through the glossy barrier as Iroa was complying with the commanded protocols. I awaited him with my arms folded in front of me, with just the tiniest bit of trepidation holding close to my psyche.

"Sam," Iroa began as he stuck out his hand for me to shake once he walked into the room, which I took, surprised he remembered the custom, "I'm glad to see that you're doing much better than I saw you last. I hope you don't have any hard feelings about me shooting you, huh?"

The elder man was looking spryer since I had last seen him. No longer quite the pathetic shell of a quarian, there seemed to be a spring in Iroa's step as he entered the room. Even the soft wheat colors of his suit seemed to be a little more vibrant, his eyes gleaming beyond the yellow barrier of his visor.

"Just slight scarring, no big deal," I smirked as I tapped the area on my stomach where the practice round had slammed into me. "Wish you could have given me prior notice but I kind of understand the need for all the secrecy."

"Well, it got the reaction we needed, huh? Eyzn actually thought you had died and that geth of yours did quite well to spirit you back and get you back on your feet. But we can discuss that later. I understand that things have been… a little tense since you got back home?"

"Ah, yeah," I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. I didn't know if Iroa knew about Nya nearly dying or not, so I decided to skirt around that subject without directly lying to him. "We had a few close calls, but things are somewhat stable right now. We've… uh, things are definitely better between us now, Nya and I. I'd say that she's doing just fine."

"Is she here?"

I pointed to the cordoned off bed. "Right over there."

Iroa dipped his head in acknowledgement as he tentatively edged closer and closer to where Nya lay. I pulled over a chair for him to sit in, which he graciously accepted. The cloth that separated him and Nya's bed was still preventing him from looking directly at her and he was shifting in his seat nervously as a result.

For some reason, Iroa was now a little choked up for words, perhaps fearful at the fact that he could speak to his daughter once more. This had been the first opportunity in years and it looked like he was wracking his brain in order to find a course of dialogue that would not immediately piss Nya off. Their history together had been brief, but to describe it as anything less than fractious was doing it a disservice.

I took a seat on the couch opposite Iroa, staying quiet while waiting for the man to begin to speak. This meeting had been his initial idea, so it was on him to start it.

"It's funny how one's perspective changes in loneliness," Iroa initially rasped as he toyed with his fingers, taking quick glances towards the covered bed. "One has time to… to do a bit of introspection. Reflections on the past… you know, that sort of thing. If nothing else, I think that it did me some good. Gave me time to mentally cleanse myself. I could only rely on myself to keep me entertained instead of having to subject to the sycophantic cravings of others not all that concerned about my well-being."

"If you're trying to come up with an excuse for why you behaved the way you did all that time ago," Nya's voice sourly scythed through the curtain, "then I don't want to hear it."

The look in Iroa's eyes was akin to those of a wounded puppy's and I actually started to feel kind of bad for the man, despite myself.

"I don't think that I'll ever be able to excuse my actions, Nyareth," Iroa sighed. "I know what I did to you and Sam was… wrong. Completely wrong. I did not handle myself as a father should and I have accepted that my punishment is fair. However, do you believe that I can never be redeemed? I don't ask for you to look upon me as your parent, but that I can at least ease the guilt that I have been carrying for all these years."

"And _I'm_ the one that can help you with your pain?" Nya snorted, her shadowy outline shifting a bit. "So you've taken all the responsibility for you own actions, is that what you're trying to have me believe? I know what you've done for Sam, Iroa, but don't you think that I might see this as just a tactic to win me back over? You're cleverer than you lead others to believe, Iroa. I know how conniving you really are. Would you really stoop so low in such a transparent way to gain my trust?"

Iroa helplessly glanced back toward me, as if he was expecting me to lend him a friendly word or two of assistance. I just shrugged. Iroa was going to have to figure this one out on his own. Nya was the one he needed to convince, not me.

"I saved Sam," Iroa stated carefully, "not because I expected to be rewarded with your presence, Nyareth. I did it because… because I realized that there was no other course of action that I found to be right. I saw how happy the two of you were back on Rannoch. You were just so… _devoted_ … and I had been shamefully blind to that aspect. For months I had been asking myself why I had failed at being a good father, until Eyzn told me of his new involvement in your life. I saw how Eyzn was trying to keep you apart with hatred and suddenly, it all clicked for me. I had been in Eyzn's position once, trying to control people out of fear and anger, and it had only made things worse. I knew then that it was my duty as a father to make sure that my daughter and my stepson – my _real_ stepson – were safe and sound back together, free of scrutiny and sadism. I did it because I wanted to do the right thing, not because I wanted recognition for my actions."

Nya did not immediately respond to that and Iroa kept going after taking a much needed breath.

"I… am fully aware… that you're probably disappointed in me. I can't blame you for that or even say that you're wrong. It's like I said: I've already accepted that there's no excuse for my behavior—"

With a raking of metal clasps upon a steel bar, the curtain surrounding Nya's bed was suddenly whisked away, sending a wall of artificial sunlight streaming into the room, revealing the infuriated and unmasked face of my wife as she beheld her father with bared teeth.

" _Disappointed?_ " Nya repeated in a hushed tone as her father jerked backward in astonishment. "Disappointed? I cannot fathom why you would choose a word so insignificant to how I really feel, Iroa! Tell me, do I _look_ disappointed at all to you?!"

Iroa seemed to be at a loss for words since his eyes were unable to be torn away from looking upon his daughter's face. Nya had chosen her moment well. Iroa had been thoroughly caught off guard with this revelation for this was the first time he had seen Nya without a mask on and her expression was one twisted by anger. Iroa would know, by this point, that he truly reaped the consequences of his actions now that he could see its effects for himself.

"I let you down, Nyareth – Nya, I mean," Iroa said after gaining his wits back, but he was unable to look away from the face of his daughter, completely awed. "I admit it and will continue to admit it every time you should ask."

"That's true," Nya spat. "You really _have_ let me down during every single imaginable moment in my life."

Iroa drooped his head, saddened. "Every single moment?"

Nya was about to respond scathingly but she halted as she realized what Iroa was referring to and set her jaw, flushed.

"All right… maybe not _every_ moment."

"Nya, please," Iroa desperately wrung his hands. "I cannot profess my guilt any more. I've been an idiot, a fool, a complete dotard. If you don't believe that there will be any way that you'll ever forgive me, then tell me! I'll leave peacefully, never to see you again. I just can't abide being tormented by you, not knowing for sure what's real or not."

By this point, Nya and I were getting increasingly uncomfortable at Iroa's begging. This was starkly different from the time that we had first met this man back on Rannoch – this was _genuine_ remorse that could not be emphasized further lest it fall into parody. I shifted on the couch, nervous as to the decision that Nya would have to make soon.

If it were up to me, I probably would have pardoned Iroa, but this was a choice that was not up to me to be the final voice on. Nya had that honor and I had no say in the matter. The man was not my father and I was already biased on how I had come to my decision, but I readied myself for the worst and tried to adopt Nya's mindset for why she would turn him away, if it came to that.

Oh, but how she really wanted to be done with him. It was easy to tell, she was cautiously looking in all directions, uncertain of herself. This would be an opportunity she would never have again – the chance to finally send Iroa away once and for all. She owed him nothing, despite what Iroa had done for me. She was most likely entertaining the notion of spitting in his face and having him vanish for good, unmoved by his sincerity. It would be a conclusion that I could sympathize with… but may not agree with.

Yet, she still was keeping silent. The old Nya would have been chomping at the bit to rid herself of her father. What was going on in her head right now?

Iroa then abruptly stood from his chair and gave her a respectful nod as he turned to the door to leave. "I'll leave you be, then," he said, certain of the outcome. "Sam," he then said to me in way of parting.

"Iroa," I similarly replied.

The quarian took only three steps before a tender word from Nya was spoken from behind him.

" _Wait_."

Her father halted in place before slowly turning back around apprehendingly. Nya was still glancing down at her bedsheets, her hands limp upon her lap, shoulders rising up and down with her heavy breathing.

"I don't know if I can ever completely forgive you," Nya said as she finally raised her head up, determination and consternation mixed in her expression, a slight grimace tugging at the corner of her mouth, "but that doesn't mean that I'm not willing to give you a chance."

Iroa processed this information for a beat, slowly nodding as he ran through the implications in his head. He gave a very miniscule bounce in his knees, probably the most vivid expression of joy that I had ever seen come from the man. Then again, I would not have been all too surprised had he just dropped to his knees and began to thank his ancestors in ragged bellows for bestowing this opportunity unto him, or some kooky crap like that. Thankfully, his subtle reaction was all the more impressive, not to mention gratifying to witness.

"One chance is all I need, Nya," Iroa responded gratefully, his throat sounding clogged with emotion. "Thank you. I promise that I won't let you down again."

"I hope that's true," Nya said wistfully.

"Still, I'll let you be. I don't want to intrude any longer than I have to. Besides, you're probably still tired from your healing."

Nya and I shared a quick look at that, each of us wondering if we were going to emit in a fit of giggles at such an opportune moment. Fortunately, we were adults so we managed to keep our immature thoughts to ourselves, but damned if we weren't thinking of raunchy memories right off the bat.

As Iroa was about to step back into the decontamination chamber to leave, he gave one last look to Nya. "I'm not sure if you were aware of it or not, but… you look so much like your mother. She would have been proud to see you now. I'm certain of it."

The air had cleared once Iroa had gone, but there was still the drowning roar left behind in his wake of the troubling silence that had fallen over us.

Wounds in our hearts clotted as my dusted mind was spared one out of many burdens weighing upon it.

Still, it felt like I was being weighed down.

* * *

 **A/N: I know that many of you have been clamoring for a little more light-heartedness in this story, so hopefully this begins to make up for all of the dreary moments that I had you endure. Don't get too complacent though, because soon we'll be right back into the mix.**

 **Playlist :**

 **Loving: "Main Theme" by Craig Armstrong from the film _In Time_**

 **Iroa and Nya Reconcile: "The Last Man" by Clint Mansell from the film _The Fountain_**


	22. Chapter 19: No Premium for Revolts

_Cool drops of water descended upon me. Running down my face. Soaking my clothes. A chill naturally accompanied the sensation. I stirred, grumbling to myself._

 _Rain. It felt like rain._

 _There was a deep rumble from overhead, like enormous boulders cracking in half from miles away._

 _It was rain._

 _My eyes, once they had opened, spent a few seconds focusing in the nebulous blurriness that fell upon my vision like a subtle film, turning my surroundings into a dissolved mass of colors and nameless shapes. There was very little light that could have helped me see better – there was a depressing dimness that clung to this place, muting the mood and exacerbating the cold perception that nipped at my skin._

 _The slashing wind was not helping matters much, preventing me from keeping myself warm as I now realized that I was lying on ground that was half-frozen, coated with dirt and mud. My back felt wet and the tips of my fingertips were growing numb. It felt like I had been prostrate out here for hours._

 _As my eyes finally cleared, I could discern the frantically shaking limbs of a tree with no leaves right above me. Its branches were being jerked in every direction from the wind, creating disconcerting creaking noises. A flurry of raindrops, accumulated from the constant drizzling, were flung from the wooden tips down onto my face, spattering me with the frigid liquid and rendering me even more frozen. Dark storm clouds hovered above the ground, threatening to spill their payload, but they were holding back for now, even though rumblings of thunder could be heard at a distance. It sounded like a timpani was being whaled upon with exuberance – I could not see any bolts of lightning so far, but the thunder meant that they very well could be on their way to accompany the cacophony._

 _Disoriented and uncomfortable, I tried to heave myself up to leave in order to find a place where I could dry off and remain un-moistened._

 _That proved to be difficult – something was lying atop my legs, a rather heavy weight. My calves could not even be raised an inch, for they had sunken down into the softened earth. Incredulous, I lifted my upper torso up so that I could have a look._

 _Blank, glassy eyes stared right back at me. A body, stiff and lifeless, already cold, pinned me to the damp ground. Shining motes of light through a translucent crimson visor – a pleading, remorseful look._

 _Deep gouges in the mud made frantic patterns by their hands. They had died with their hands scrambling at the muck, trying to move me._

 _Nya._

 _I could scarcely twitch out of fear and sadness, dumbstruck beyond all belief that my wife was lying dead atop me. With a helplessly shaking hand, I nervously nudged at her shoulder, but encountered only a limp resistance. Nya flopped more onto her back, now pinning my shins, as her final stare was now privy to the chaotic heavens that churned right above her._

 _Tearing my horrified gaze from her permanently open eyes, I looked down and saw a ragged vertical tear in Nya's suit nearly a foot long upon her chest, the material sheared away in clumsy cuts. Someone had done this to her. Blood tinged the edges of the breach red, dribbling down her sides. I could only see a pink-black mass as I looked deeper into the wound, a dark cavern that slowly leaked blood._

 _Nya's palms were now splayed open to the sky, also coated in blood. Had she been fighting off her attacker? I found that I could not get my head to properly concentrate on a single thought. I felt dizzy, detached, my emotions were slowly being sapped away. Spots appeared in my vision. Nausea sloshed in my stomach. It hurt to breathe – it felt like I was in the beginnings of a full-blown panic attack._

 _I tried to move, but Nya was still weighing me down. For some reason, I was as weak as a newborn baby. My own hands now scraped uselessly in the mud, trying to claw myself out from the pit, but all I did was tear my fingers open, turning the ground red with bloody streaks._

 _I laid myself back down in the muck with a shout after having cracked a fingernail in half, the rain now turning everything into slurry. Brown infected water sloshed down and around my body, peppered with stray blades of grass that had fallen into the stream. Bits of pebbles knocked against my body and the water level started to rise. My skin immediately became numb as I was slowly submerged more and more and the rain fell harder, threatening to drown me. I opened my mouth to let out a forlorn howl, defiant in the face of nature's rage._

 _That's what it wanted from me, right? My anger. My fury. It fed upon me by killing my wife. I would reject its temptation and leave this life pure._

 _I would deny the cold embrace this time around._

 _Something hard then landed near my head with a heavy thump. Mud splashed onto the side of my face and I shook my head and spat, clearing my mouth. I then turned to look at what had dropped beside me._

 _It was a piece of polished rock – granite, possibly. The stone was smooth and looked like it had been cut on all sides, clean straight edges. Only the bottom half was jagged, like it had been broken off of its foundations. What was curious was that there appeared to be writing etched into the face of the rock – all capital letters spelling what looked like… a name?_

 _And not just any name._

" _Taylor McLeod," I uttered hoarsely._

 _Her gravestone._

 _My sister._

" _I'm back again," I whispered as I tenderly touched the stone, feeling its hardness underneath my pathetic grip._

 _Was this… Earth? The graveyard in Carmel? Why was I back here?_

" _Indeed you are," a new voice suddenly uttered as a three-toed armored boot stepped into view with a squelching noise, leaving thick imprints in the mud as this new entrant walked right up next to me._

 _Naturally, my head travelled upward to discern the owner of the boots, intrinsically knowing who it was going to be as soon as I saw the first splash of blue seared across their enviro-suit as a flash of lightning finally streaked across the sky, turning everything white for a nanosecond._

 _Eyzn stood over me, a knife tinged with blood and rain in one hand, and something unidentifiable in his other hand. I tried to make out what the unknown object was. It was round, bulbous, and completely moistened with blood. Eyzn's fingers squeezed the object, painting his suited hand entirely red, his fingers making slick sounds as they eagerly rubbed against one another._

 _I then realized that he was holding a heart._

 _Not just any heart…_

 _Eyzn laughed, a raw and guttural sound, as he knelt down to me at the same time, at the right angle for the lightning to catch the blade of his knife, turning each raindrop into blinding-white streaks as they fell through the air. He held the heart up for me to look at right as he tightened his grip upon his weapon._

" _Don't worry," a whisper seethed through the quarian's vocabulator. "I already have yours."_

 _I didn't have time to ask what that meant before the knife came screaming down to meet my body._

* * *

I had a brief moment of panic when it seemed like every one of my cells cried out at once and dumped their entire amount of adrenaline into my bloodstream, sending my heart rate surging and my eyes opening wide in an instant, attentive and focused. A huge breath was the next thing that came to me instinctively and I suddenly shot up from where I had been lying, momentarily disoriented as I failed to recognize my surroundings. The bedsheets, the room, the far-away bathroom, none of it looked familiar.

It just took a bit for my brain to catch up, is all.

Already I began to relax as I realized that I was not back in the graveyard on Earth and that my nightmare had ended. I was in the queen-sized bed of the new condo that I was renting on the Citadel as sort of a stopgap for Nya and I to call home while our actual apartment was being repaired in the wake of it being invaded (turns out that gigantic window replacements are quite expensive). I was safe and sound here, no cause for alarm.

Clutching my chest, I tried my best to calm down as I radiated heat off my sweat-laden body. The dreams had been getting so visceral lately that I was nearly considering taking medication just to give me a good night's rest once in a while. I hated waking up in a fright like this – the frequency for which this occurred was now happening every other day now. The terrors would not stop trying to feast upon me. I could not relax, knowing that nowhere was truly safe, not with Eyzn still out there.

Panting, I threw my hand out to the other side of the bed for support, only to find that it was empty, to my surprise. I had been the only one sleeping in this bed, it seemed, but not for a long while as the opposite end still had traces of warmth that clung to the flannel sheets.

 _Now where had she gone?_

I was grumbling to myself as I briefly knelt down to find my slippers as my feet were feeling particularly cold, despite how tightly they had been bundled during the night. I found the coverings relatively easily and began to pace around the room a bit, trying to eradicate the last vestiges of sleep now that I was firmly awake.

It had been three weeks to the day when we had ushered Nya into the hospital and only two days ago had she finally left it. Miraculously, we had managed to keep Nya's location a secret from prying eyes the entire time and we had also managed to quickly find a place to rest our heads – this three-room condo – while keeping ourselves anonymous so that Eyzn could not so easily find us again. Procuring this place involved us utilizing the services of an application that only really needed a one-way link to a bank account in order to rent it for a set amount of time. The place itself was actually quite average in terms of location and amenities – we weren't exactly finding ourselves lacking in any area. We had only spent a couple of nights in the condo thus far, but it had shown itself to be far more comfortable than having to spend all that time in that cramped hospital room. The couch there had not gotten any less crummy during our stay, no matter how many times we had utilized it for our benefit.

Thanks to the intensive therapy that I had made Nya go through while she had been a resident of the hospital, she was able to be up and about for long periods of time without much discomfort at all. She still had some stiffness in her hamstrings as a result of atrophy in those areas and the limp in her left leg was gradually diminishing but still not showing any signs of vanishing completely. It really did look like that Nya would have a compromised gait forever, but it was better than I expected because it was actually quite manageable for her to function normally in her state. She did not have to wear a brace or any other apparatus to keep her steady. Hell, unless one was paying close attention, her limp was not that obvious upon first glance.

Nya, not keen on not being up to one hundred percent, was somewhat depressed of her limp, but she was gradually getting used to it day after day. With a little luck, she would be at the point where even she might not be able to notice it all that much. And if it proved to be too bothersome, then we could always schedule an appointment for her to receive some cybernetics. The point was, she had options, but she was going to have to live with her injuries throughout the very near future.

A short hallway connected the main bedroom to the guest room, which is where I figured Nya was right now. Before I could get there, I nearly ran into Sagan in the middle of the hall, who was dutifully tapping away at a constantly shifting puzzle that had the shape of a sphere – a visual representation of the intensive processing that he was currently in the middle of accomplishing.

"Samuel," Sagan greeted, not lifting his head up from his work.

"Sagan," I answered. "How's progress coming along?"

For the past few weeks, Sagan had been primarily focused on hacking the omni-tool that had once belonged to Vahl, while she still had been alive, at least. It turned out that before Vahl had perished from her exposure to the open air that Sagan had already taken it upon himself to remove the quarian's omni-tool for his own uses, just to see if it had any usable information locked in its memory banks. Vahl apparently equipped herself with only the most rudimentary of omni-tools as, according to Sagan, this particular model lacked many of the functions that even a mid-range tool would normally possess. It had no manufacturing application, no software emulator for games, no connected widget to dispense medi-gel, a lackluster scanning program, and a low resolution camera. Either Vahl was the cheapest quarian this side of the galaxy or Eyzn was really stingy with the funds he allocated to his subordinates.

What Vahl's omni-tool did contain, according to Sagan, would be valuable records of any conversations Vahl might have had with Eyzn or any GPC (Galactic Positioning Coordinates) data that would allow us to get a fix on Eyzn's location. There was no worry about Eyzn remotely logging into Vahl's tool and deleting any data through his connection because, as Sagan pointed out, Eyzn had not invested in that sort of software capability. Perhaps now that idiot would start to feel the pain from his penny-pinching habits.

However, it seemed that all the money Eyzn had funneled into his technology sector had all gone to the security protocols that prevented any unwanted users from logging onto discarded tools. Sagan had tried to explain just how intricate the system was to me, but if I could be honest, I started mentally checking out at around the time Sagan was describing the tool's unusual firewall protocols, so I was frankly quite useless at deciphering even a tenth of what the geth had said to me.

Either that, or Sagan was not real good at explaining things in layman's terms to dumb organics.

In any case, it wasn't Sagan's fault that I was useless at programming – it just was not my forte. But what I could understand was that trying to brute force our way through the username/password combinations was not going to work in this case – three wrong guesses and the omni-tool's circuits automatically slag. Therefore Sagan had to improvise using precomputed "rainbow" tables in order to detect particalized password bits that were still floating around in the free extranet space. This meant that hacking such a system would take quite a while as Eyzn had most likely seen fit to have his password utilize a combination of characters from as many different languages as possible. Sagan had even detected the use of a DNA profiler as a fail-safe option, but the geth had Vahl's blood on file, so that aspect was not a worry.

All that remained was for him to finally crack this damn password.

"Progress is proceeding as expected," Sagan said after five seconds' pause, which had to be an eternity in geth-time. I guess he was throwing all of his computing power into this problem. "We have identified up to seven characters of the user-pass combination in the appropriate order. However, there are still an unknown amount of characters that we have yet to detect and implement into our solution."

I yawned and rubbed at my chin. Weeks of careful hacking for only seven characters. This better have been worth it in the end.

"Any clue as to when we'll have the complete login info?" I asked.

"Unknown," Sagan responded with the expected answer, "but considering the fact that what constitutes strong passwords are strings made up of at least eight characters, we would estimate that final user-pass combination construction should finalize within a week's time."

A week! That would just give Eyzn all the more time to strike against us, should he find out where we now resided. We've already been twiddling our thumbs as it was!

"Just let me know when you've got something," I said instead, keeping my voice level. "The sooner we get this information, the sooner we can end all this. For all our sakes, especially Nya's."

"Acknowledged. We too are dedicated to preserving Creator McLeod's safety. We will lend our assistance to your mission to keep her from harm."

"I appreciate it, Sagan. I really do."

I then entered into the next room where there was this constant, yet faint, whirring noise that was being emitted from the corner – it was obvious from the other noises accompanying it that someone was puffing away with exertions. Nya, back in her enviro-suit, was on top of the treadmill that we had procured for her, dutifully trying to keep pace with the indicated settings. She limped forward upon the rubber surface as she desperately tried to keep her gait even and less halting, heavy pants coming through her vocabulator.

Despite having been invented over 150 years ago, the treadmill was still a device that had lots of relevance in this day and age. It was a perfect instrument for people to get a cardio workout in such a relatively small space – the sort of design that was, in fact, timeless. The potential could never be replicated with any other piece of machinery, no matter how many attempts had been made over the years. The treadmill may have received a few component upgrades since its inception, but its functional core still very much remained the same.

Nya was rather ambivalent about having to use the treadmill as part of her therapy, but she viewed it as a necessary evil. Anything that could stave off muscle atrophy would be begrudgingly accepted into her morning routine, driven by a fierce desire to keep her own functional independence.

Nya saw me enter the barebones room and she gave a quick nod of acknowledgement. She then kept at her workout for about a minute longer before she finally shut the treadmill down, slowing down to a walk instead of a clumsy jog.

It was hard for me not to notice that Nya bent down, after hopping off the treadmill, in order to massage a muscle cluster around her knee, the bad one. I chewed my lip and Nya caught the tic and shot me a warning look with her eyes. In response, I simply gave a limp shrug of capitulation, hoping that Nya would at least get the message not to push herself too hard. If she tried to speed up her healing, she could very well do more damage to herself at this stage.

"Missed you when I woke up," I greeted her, keen to start the opening topic on anything other than Nya's leg.

Nya slowly stood, panting, making sure to place her weight on her good foot. "Wanted to get an early start to the day. Sorry if I wasn't there in the beginning. How'd you sleep?"

Maybe I should have specified that I wanted the opening topic to be anything other than Nya's leg _and_ my sleeping habits. Damn it all.

"All things considered, rather terribly," I admitted after a moment's pause as I leaned against the doorway, my arms crossed over my chest.

"I'm sorry," Nya said again as she limped over to me. "You still having that same dream again?"

I gave a solemn nod. "It just isn't _changing_ and I don't know what to do about it."

I then held up a hand as I closed my eyes and shook my head, giving a faint sigh as well.

"But my ability to have a good night's rest isn't important right now," I said. "What about you? How's the leg feeling?"

All bets were now off on the topic front, now that my sleep had been broached.

"Sore," Nya admitted as she raised her leg to stretch her hamstrings. I could hear her make a tiny gasp as she pushed her flexibility to the limit – the bones of her knuckles even gave little pops as she tightened her hands around her knee. "But at least I'm standing."

"And I'm quite thankful for that."

Nya had to be shooting me a smirk under that visor. "So? How am I doing? Is there any hope for my recovery?"

I lightly shook my head with a mirthless chuckle. "Such self-deprecation from you, dear. Sometimes I forget that you're not completely serious. First of all: _you're fine_. Second of all, these things take time. You probably won't be at your very best until… oh, I don't know… at least six months from now."

"Six damn months," Nya grumbled as she continued to massage her knee. "I guess it could be worse."

"You're definitely right about that. Hell, you're doing better than most. We both are. In hindsight, I don't think we're doing too badly for a couple of idiots that had temporarily died, eh?"

"Just _one_ idiot," Nya retorted, her eyes lidding upwards in a hidden grin as she knocked the back of her hand against my chest after she had hobbled over to get me within arm's reach.

"Ouch, my feelings."

"You'll live."

Nya certainly did not take fools lightly.

"Remember, we have guests coming over in a couple of hours," I reminded her as I left to go back to the room to prepare for a shower. "So be on your best behavior, okay?"

Nya swore as she flipped me a rude gesture with her hands. "What do you mean, 'best behavior?' I'm _always_ on my best behavior."

"I said that because Iroa will be here too, that's why. Just want to make sure in case you decide to… I don't know, flip out on him or something."

"He hasn't earned my ire just yet," Nya growled playfully as she shook a raised fist, "but _you_ will be if you keep insinuating that I'm a poor host!"

"I'll take that as my cue to leave, then," I mumbled as I dashed away, leaving Nya to her stretches in peace.

I could still hear quiet laughing at my expense emanating from her room as I left.

* * *

The reason why Rie, Chandler, and Iroa had come calling all at once was not purely to entice everyone to get socially motivated, but rather they were simply coming by just to make sure that things were continuing to be A-Okay at the McLeod household. It was not a raucous occasion, but one rather muted as if there was a dark cloud hanging over each of our heads.

Still, it was nice to see some interaction going on between everyone. To tell the truth, that was something that we had been solely lacking in lately. It was about time that we had started to live our lives as close to normal as possible. Rie and Chandler were now engrossed in whatever topic they had chosen to pass the time with, Sagan was off in the corner doing his own thing (as geth were naturally poor conversationalists), and Iroa was standing idly by, shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking uncertain of himself as he was engaged in deep conversation with Nya (the two were acting rather cordial, with was a very good sign of cooperation).

I was also hanging back from most of the conversations that were taking place, too wrapped up in my own thoughts to concentrate on multiple different topics at once. To be honest, my attention was more fixated upon the door that led to the main hallway out of this new complex – after having to battle my way out of one apartment, I'm sure that I can be forgiven for being a little paranoid about any future encounters.

Nya and I had made sure to take every precaution when renting this place out by making all the financial transactions through a private application so that we could acquire the condo without having to put our names anywhere on the titles. Also, we made sure to get a centrally localized condo within the actual complex, which meant that there were not any windows for people to look in upon. All things considered, this was quite the step down from our past digs, but the anonymity was a necessary quality for us that we were willing to make a few sacrifices in order to keep our safety.

Although I should be a little more thankful. Even though this condo was much smaller than our usual apartment, it still had enough room for us to be spread out comfortably. Most people on the Citadel did not even get that amount of luxury.

I got up from one of the cheap chairs, mumbled an excuse about needing to refill my drink (which was a lie as my cup was nearly full already) and edged away into the kitchen area, now deliberately taking my time to make it seem like I was rooting around for alcohol, even though I knew full well where it was residing.

I guess I just wanted to disengage for a bit without trying to seem too rude to my friends. Already I was in a bind through my own mental self-torment, fully knowing that I would have to face Eyzn sometime soon. That amount of encroaching tension was doing havoc to my appetite – I was feeling not at all hungry even though I probably had not eaten a complete meal since last night.

There was a clink of someone setting their glass down very close to me. I turned around slightly and rose myself up to find Iroa standing right next to me in the kitchen, having finished talking with his daughter, now unconcerned with the goings-on in the living room.

"Need something from the fridge?" I asked him.

The quarian shook his head vehemently and edged a bit closer to me. "You need to move faster, Sam."

"Pardon?"

"He knows you're coming," Iroa urged as he took another tiny step in my direction. "Eyzn."

Immediately, I grabbed his arm and led him over where the wall of the kitchen was obscuring us from Nya and my friends, a bulge in my throat beginning to ache.

"Iroa," I mustered through gritted teeth, "I am completely aware that Eyzn knows what I want to do. The problem is that I don't have the first fucking clue where to start looking. I've got Sagan working on that right now as we speak."

"The more you wait, the more dug in he's going to be," Iroa warned.

"I'm not intentionally biding my time! We just need to give Sagan the chance to triangulate Eyzn's position. Any moron would know that after the debacle in Los Angeles that he would have gone to ground in another location. It's a pretty big galaxy out there, Iroa, and I'm not sure if you noticed that or not."

Iroa nearly stamped his foot, fuming. Christ, I'd forgotten at how irritable this man could be but I was biting my tongue as best as I could. I needed Iroa on my side because he was genuinely trying to make up for his mistakes. Antagonizing him was not going to help either of us.

"Look, Sam," Iroa said after taking a breath, "if I knew where to find Eyzn I would have told you weeks ago. I've even been in touch with my contacts every day to see if they've gotten any clues—"

"Wait," I held up a hand, "when did _you_ get contacts of your own?"

"Rather recently, actually. Made up from the people that were freed from the Shed, of course. They've set up their own network ever since they had a chance to escape from Eyzn like you did."

Well, fancy that.

"All those people and still no luck?"

"They're not professionals, if that's what you mean. But even if I had a widespread network for you to utilize at your whim, you have to know that finding Eyzn would still not be a simple task, nor is he ever going to go easy on you in any case. And he's definitely not going to let you walk all over him when you do locate him and meet him face-to-face."

I scowled at the man and brought the collar of my shirt down so that the quarian could look at the long scar at my neck. "I think that I might know that better than you, _Iroa_."

Iroa raised his hands in a gesture of peace. He immediately realized that he was out of line and backed off a bit.

"I'm concerned for my daughter, Sam," the quarian breathed. "From what I heard, I almost lost her weeks ago… all because Eyzn could not let go of a grudge. I don't want to put her in that position again."

I then pushed Iroa closer against the wall as I brought my voice to a whisper. "You and me both. Believe me, I'm more concerned about Nya than you are and I'm honestly not about to let Nya get herself hurt again. When we find out where Eyzn is, she stays behind. I'm going to try to make certain of that."

"Fine, but I want to go with you," Iroa jabbed a finger into my chest. "I need to look Eyzn in the eye one last time."

"I'm going to kill him," I seethed. "You know that, right?"

"I won't persuade you otherwise. What he's done… there can be no redemption. Quarians don't tend to forgive betrayals so easily."

"So I've gathered," I grimaced, immediately digging up Nya's anecdotes in my head about the rough life she lived on the flotilla due to her family's mistakes.

"But," Iroa nervously wrung his hands, "can you at least promise me that Nya will be safely away from the fighting when it does happen?"

I almost laughed in the quarian's face, forgetting my desire to be quiet. Iroa's eyes were shining through the yellow glass of his visor, big and hopeful. Still so naïve. What a shame.

"Honestly?" I breathed. "I can't."

Iroa looked like he was going to voice another word of protest but he very soon acquiesced, knowing that I was being rather open about the behavior of his daughter. The two of us both relaxed and I scratched at the back of my head sheepishly.

"How…" I asked quietly, "…how are things going between you two? I mean, you and Nya."

The man gave a brief glance towards the living room. "We're taking it slowly. I've learned that it isn't wise to rush these things. It's going to take some time before… before we're good, Sam, if I'm being honest. She's never had a father in her life before."

"You want some advice?" I whispered as I laid a friendly hand on the quarian's shoulder. "Just keep doing what you're doing now. It might not seem like it, but I can assure you that it's working. She really is warming to you – probably because you're acting level-headed in her presence. Don't try to force it because she's her own person, but believe me, before you know it she'll come to appreciate you being around."

Iroa let out a sigh of relief, nearly diminishing a couple of inches as the tension left him like air out of a balloon. "At this point, I'd settle for Nya calling me 'Father.' If I can at least get that far, everything I've ever done in my life would have been worth it."

I grinned as I spread a hand to lead us back to the living room. "That's the most realistic goal I've ever heard from you yet, Iroa."

"I'm trying not to be too lofty with my achievements," Iroa weakly chuckled. "You'd probably beat it out of me otherwise."

"What, you mean what happened on Rannoch? You're really not going to hold _that_ over my head, are you?"

The quarian just gave me a long look, the position of his eyes rather unreadable.

* * *

Later in the day, conversation had dwindled down to the bare minimum of what could even be considered as a forum of open dialogue. Everyone at this point was mostly keeping their attention glued to the vidscreen where some movie was being broadcast – the channel of which had been decided by popular vote. The film itself was of human origins, which meant that the production was reasonably high, and it looked to be one of those award-winning biopic flicks that were guaranteed to tug at the patriot heartstrings of the audience as part of its deliberately manipulative style of rearranging actual events to the film's advantage.

Still, it looked somewhat entertaining.

I, meanwhile, had momentarily disengaged from the film to have a private discourse with Sagan, who had indicated for me to step away with him for a bit. My interest piqued, we headed into the bedroom and I locked the door behind me.

"Tell me you have something," I said as I approached the tall synthetic.

Sagan dipped his head in a dutiful nod. "As of thirty point three minutes ago, we successfully managed to infiltrate the seditionist's database utilizing mined portions of the user-pass combination from the repossessed omni-tool. We have provided an analysis for you to review."

"Only took you thirty minutes to come up with an analysis? You're getting slow, Sagan."

"No, Samuel. Our analysis was performed in only a four minute time span after we devoted the majority of our system intrusion to verifying the data in the cloud files."

That geth actually sounded _smug_.

I laughed and spread my hands, my anticipation rising. "Let's see what you have, then."

Sagan raised his arms and then abruptly separated them, a rectangular holo-screen appearing in the space that he had just created between his fingertips. I could instantly realize that what the geth was showing me was a map of some sorts, seeing that I could recognize the telltale patterns of roads and buildings organized in the grid-like format.

A city, it looked like, judging from how closely the streets were clustered together. The layout was not entirely in a grid as there were some curved streets and roundabouts here and there, but it was not a city that I could remember off my memory alone. That is, if this happened to be a depiction of a city based on Earth. I was still a little hazy on trying to determine the difference in city plans between species. The only real context clue I could glean from this map is that a large body of water – an ocean, perhaps – lay directly west of the city, serving as a natural barrier to prevent city progression.

"Well, it's not Los Angeles, I'll give you that," I muttered as I stared intently at the screen. I didn't think that Eyzn would have stayed in Los Angeles anyway, but at least there was firmer proof that the man had fled the scene and had gone to ground in a place that was perhaps less obvious. "So, which city am I looking at exactly?"

"The area in question is called Tel Aviv. It is a major technological center in the Mediterranean area on Earth."

"Tel Aviv?" I perked my head up. "Cute of Eyzn. Thinks he can get away by hiding in the Holy Land. As if he could not be any more of a hypocrite."

"You know of this city?"

"Yeah," I stared at the map with fresh eyes. "It was hit hard during the war, but the people in the area wasted no time in building it back up again. Apparently it's now doing better than it ever was, but that's because the United Israeli Republic is shoveling a lot of credits into the preservation of their original borders, or so I've read. Probably because so many tech companies have sites there would be one of the reasons why Eyzn might choose to hang out in that area. Plus, it's part of the UIR, which is always full of pilgrims looking to reach the original country of Israel. Tel Aviv is usually the first place people go before heading over to cities such as Jerusalem or even up towards the Sea of Galilee."

Sagan seemed to soak this information up quite handedly. "We have seen several references to this place being a site of importance to many humans. In this case, would the borders of the UIR be considered an appropriate analogue to the determination of our Creators to reside on Rannoch?"

I just laughed and tapped Sagan's shoulder in an appreciative manner. "You're going to need a better person than me to help you explain spirituality, my friend. I don't subscribe to a set faith these days, so I'm kind of useless there. But I will say that your example is remarkably close to what it's like for humans to be over in the UIR. Almost uncannily similar, in fact."

"Acknowledged," Sagan said without a trace of disappointment. He then maneuvered his fingers and a spaghetti-like trail of red dotted lines were then overlaid on top of the map, crisscrossing their way from road to road in an aimless, rambling pattern. "From what was able to be pulled from the omni-tool, we could not verify the exact address of Creator Kannos' omni-tool, but the route you see on-screen is the path of the address that was most prominent in the omni-tool's memory banks. It stands to reason that Creator Kannos would be the primary contact for his subordinates, therefore we have estimated that the route you are now seeing belongs to that of the primary target."

"A good hypothesis," I mused as I raised a finger to trace the lines across the map. "But these routes… there's no rhyme or reason to them. It looks like they're just ambling about, without a complete plan."

"Yes, but observe that the routes only tend to congregate in an area of less than two square miles. Relatively speaking, that is a small scope of influence for an organic to take. Tradecraft could be in effect. It would stand to reason that the owner of this omni-tool is deliberately keeping a low profile by diminishing his visual presence."

"Like someone who doesn't want to be found."

"Exactly."

"And… here, it looks like he's keeping himself confined to the… Bursa neighborhood?"

"With occasional forays into the Tel Binyamin area, correct."

I blew air out of my mouth slowly as I took a step back to admire the progress that we had made. "Well… I'll be goddamned. I think we really have found Eyzn." I then quickly glanced over at Sagan. "How old is this data exactly?"

The geth rotated his dual optics in my direction. "Last known data point was collected seven hours ago."

"Fairly recent, then," I said.

"Yes. Additionally, these data points started to appear in the Tel Aviv area mere days after the time that Creator Kannos was reported to have abandoned his facility in the greater Los Angeles area including his appearance at your facilities on the Citadel."

"Definitely a big coincidence."

Sagan tilted his head, curious. "Do organics not like coincidences?"

"Not for anything like this," I sighed as I began to pace around the room. "I take it, now that we have this information, we're going to make another trip down to Earth in the morning. No doubt that Rie, Chandler, and Iroa will want to tag along as well."

"And Creator McLeod?" Sagan added.

I shook my head as I sat down on the bed, taking the weight off my restless legs. "I'd like for her to not be involved in this. She's suffered enough as it is."

"She might feel otherwise, Samuel."

"I know," my fingers began gripping at the sheets of the bed absentmindedly. "We might have to just leave tomorrow without telling her. After nearly losing her in that hospital… I don't want to go through anything like that again."

The geth stiffened and I frowned at the not-so-inconsequential reaction. Was Sagan disapproving of my decision not to inform Nya? If he did, he would usually voice his own opinion – geth were known to be rather blunt like that. Yet he did not voice a word of protest and simply stood by, deferring to the choices that I was making.

I wonder if I would have relented if Sagan asserted a differing opinion.

"Shall we commence preparations for our departure?" Sagan finally said after a noticeable pause, straightening up to his full height.

The geth looked directly above me, awaiting my orders. I was Sagan's superior, the synthetic's final line of order. He would not deliberately go against my wishes if I deemed it so. My word was his command and, even though Sagan had the right to his own opinion, he chose to defer to me for life-changing choices such as these.

To be respectful, I stood up as well and made sure to straighten my own spine, which made the tiny bones of my vertebrae creak in protest. I inhaled deeply, convincing myself that I was not being hasty, that to proceed was the right thing to do, the final step that I needed to take to seize that normality.

I needed to do this for my family.

"Sagan…" I breathed, my voice clear and razor-sharp, "… _begin_."

* * *

The approaching close of business hours meant that "night" on the Citadel had fallen upon us. Seeing as there wasn't any reason for our guests to leave, they just simply claimed any empty couches that were in the living room as their place to crash for a few hours. Splitting up before we were to head out was an ill-advised maneuver, not exactly something that should be recommended, so here everyone remained.

Sagan was off preparing for our mission, secretly out by my ship and running through all the necessary checks before we were to depart. He was also providing the transport with all the armaments we needed, seeing as we were about to go on a hunt and we needed the equipment to be completely prepared.

A hunt for our deadliest prey yet.

For Nya and I, the night was beginning in more of a modest fashion. In our room, she clambered into bed with a yawn, but not without some initial awkwardness stemming from her stiff leg. Her boots stood upright next to the foot of the bed, the straps of her external pouches lounging over the night desk, temporarily removed from her person. She slid under the covers, wriggling her hips to get in the best position. I, meanwhile, took some time in the bathroom to mournfully stare at my reflection, knowing what I was about to do… and that I was going to have to do it without Nya.

I felt itchy, restless. An invisible hand of guilt was already tormenting me, keeping me awake. Was it truly right to keep Nya in the dark about this? She deserved revenge just as much as I did. Would she understand why I was trying to keep my mission a secret from her? She knew what she had just gone through – she would _have_ to understand.

I reasoned that _I_ would understand would I be in her position. But could I truly put myself in her shoes without being biased? Was I simply deluding myself, thinking that I was making the right choice?

Or was I just making another mistake? One more to add to the pile, I suppose.

Frustrated, I wiped my soapy hands with a cloth, squeezing my fingers against one another. I had no idea how I was supposed to get any sleep with this on my mind. I was going to have to stifle all this regret in order to move on with a clear mind.

But… wouldn't my mind be clearer if I was going to tell Nya my intention?

I couldn't decide what to do.

Still considering to myself, I slowly trundled out of the bathroom and claimed a chair next to the bed to sit upon. I let the darkness float over me, giving me comfort in its silent closeness. There was nothing else to listen to, except for the soft synthesized breathing coming from Nya. There were even twin glowing points shooting in my direction – the very illumination of her eyes.

"Are you not going to join me?" Nya's voice slid through the impenetrable dark, low and husky.

I nearly jumped. I had thought that Nya had already fallen asleep. I guess I was just not ready to face her with all the indecision that had been brewing in my head as of late.

"Didn't want to disturb you," I managed to shrug. "I didn't know that you were still awake."

"I'll sleep better with you next to me," Nya whispered as she tantalizingly edged a finger in her direction before patting the unoccupied space upon the mattress. "It's cold over here. Empty too."

"I think I can help you with that," I said automatically.

"Please do," my wife said.

With an everlasting shrug, I quickly slipped out of my shirt and pants to join Nya under the covers. The sheets were thin, which meant that Nya would not overheat with her suit on. Immediately, Nya began to cuddle up against me, emitting soft murmurs from the action. The chin of her helmet gingerly rested on my shoulder and one of her legs was thrown over mine. Her fingers began to absentmindedly trace an abstract pattern on my chest before she looked up at me, all aglow.

"I've missed this part," Nya sighed, referring to the intimate contact.

"I have too," I said, completely honest. My arm was now behind Nya's head, propping her slightly up. Her hand then softly clenched, still lying atop my body.

"It's nice having someone to be so close to," Nya murmured. "But you know what's best?"

"What?"

"I just like these moments when we're lying like this, just us, and we don't even need to talk, because our company is enough. The quiet moments that fill the gaps of our lives, those are the ones that are special. You can tell it's real then."

"Weren't we always able to tell that… _we_ were real?" I asked as I turned my head, shifting my body slightly. "What we had then. What we have _now_."

Nya's hand then began dragging up towards my face as her eyes refused to meet mine for a split second. "Maybe we were both blind at one point. We should never have strayed apart from each other. If we were perfect people, we would have seen the truth for ourselves. We would have _stayed_ together, you and I."

I caught Nya's hand before she could touch my face. "But we're _not_ perfect. Far from it. We were never supposed to make the right choices all the time. It's just how we truly are as people, _flawed_ people, but that's how life is… and that's why it feels all the more real."

"It feels real because we're supposed to complement each other," Nya's eyes lidded upward in a hidden smile. "Our imperfections get evened out from our actual perfections. It helps us grow. Makes us wise. That's the sort of journey that I would only want to take with you. We got so close to our destination once… but I guess it was not to be, in the end."

"You mean," I licked my lips, "our daughter?"

Nya numbly nodded. "I just wish that we could have given her a _name_ , Sam. Why did we let her die without a name?"

Tenderly, I drew the covers up more, letting it rest over the two of us. Nya was now pressing herself more into my body and I was also clutching her more tightly. Her ribs puffed against me as she breathed and the roughened rasp from her vocabulator was all the more apparent as it hissed into my ear. Paralyzed by warmth, I just clucked my tongue in my mouth for a bit before deciding upon my answer.

"Nya…" I sighed, "…I think that failing to give our child a name will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I would have wanted to give our daughter a special name. Something meaningful. I just couldn't think of anything like that. I don't know… I probably needed to do more research on Khelish names."

"I wouldn't have cared if her name was Khelish or not. I would have gladly accepted a human name," Nya sighed.

I lifted my head, surprised. This was news to me. "You would have?"

The quarian partially lying atop me nodded. "If it meant something to you, then I would have been all for it."

"You never told me that before. I would have thought that you would have wanted our quarian daughter to have a traditional Khelish name."

"Nothing about me is traditional," Nya yawned. "Tradition left me years ago when my own people failed to acknowledge me fully as one of their own. Besides, many quarians these days are taking names from other species, anyway."

"Really?" I was still skeptical and I ruffled the pillow under my head so that I could lie down more comfortably. "Like who?"

"Tali'Zorah, that's who. Most of her kids have non-traditional names."

I opened my mouth and shut it in stunned silence. Mere mention of the legendary quarian admiral was enough to trump any skepticism that I had. Mostly because she was still very well known for being heavily steeped in her people's culture but still had managed to assimilate very different perspectives and ideas from the time that she had served aboard a human warship. She was perhaps the perfect bridge between the old and the new in quarian society, the perfect role model for the incoming quarian generations.

"Touché," I muttered. "How many kids is she up to now?"

"Last I heard, four. Her last two kids were adopted about a year ago."

"Four?! Jesus, she's really taking motherhood to heart, isn't she? Wait a minute…" I frowned. "Only two kids were adopted? Well, where did the other two come from?"

"Natural, same as me," Nya patted her suited belly.

I scrunched my face up in thought. "She married Commander—sorry, _Admiral_ Shepard, right? They used a surrogate too, since humans and quarians can't interbreed?"

Nya shook her head and pressed her hips just a little more into my side. "Not that I heard. They had a rather… unusual procedure done. Something about a serum, but it all went over my head. Whatever they did, it sounded expensive."

"I guess we'll never know the details on that front. So, what are the names of the kids?"

"Uh… Thane, Ashley, Kaidan, and Penya, if I remember correctly."

"Okay, three of those names I recognize as former members of Shepard's squad – definitely not Khelish. Penya's the only one I don't recognize and that actually sounds like Khelish to me."

Nya grunted in the affirmative. "It means 'unyielding' in your language."

"It definitely sounds prettier in Khelish," I muttered. "If we were literally to name a child 'unyielding,' the poor kid would be judged for the rest of their life."

Nya adjusted herself as she snuggled against me. "So many good names out there. Too bad we only could pick one." She let out another yawn. "Next time, perhaps."

If Nya was not holding me down, I probably would have made a full-body jolt. " _Next_ time?"

"Sam," Nya turned serious, "making the choice to have a child with you was, without a doubt, the best decision I ever made in my life. Our daughter was so beautiful… so precious… even if _we_ weren't perfect, _she_ was. I could never regret making that choice. I _know_ that you would have been a good father to her and it was just a cruel twist of fate that she was taken from us so soon. I would—Sam, are you all right?"

Asking that question was an exercise in futility because I was suddenly in the middle of an abrupt breakdown. I was trying my best to cover my face with a hand for tears were heaving streaming from my eyes. All it took was Nya's affirmation that she had known all along that I would have been good to my daughter and then I was done. Out of the game. Throat wrenching with emotion, my sobs gave me physical pain as I fought to stifle them.

Nya gave a gasp as soon as she saw my grief-stricken face and she tenderly wiped a hand just below my eyes, dabbing away my tears. I blindly shook my head, too ashamed to accept her help, but Nya was unyielding. She nudged her helmeted head against mine and made cooing noises to calm me down.

" _It's all right_ ," she was whispering to me. " _It's all right. It's all right…"_

" _Fuck_ ," I mumbled. "I _hate_ doing this in front of you."

"You don't have to say anything," Nya soothed.

"But I _have_ to," I mustered as I threw down a fist upon the bed in frustration, rippling the sheets. "I _wanted_ to be a father, Nya. More than anything. I had it all for one blessed week and before I even knew how lucky I was… it all came falling apart. I couldn't piece it back together, no matter how hard I tried. I just… all I wanted was a happy life. I wanted to be a loving parent… but I thought that I would never get that chance. Was I asking for too much?"

Nya gingerly grabbed my chin and forced my tear-stained face to look directly at her. My wife's pearl-like eyes never wavered, never left their position as they captivated my own gaze. The tension in her fingers quickly became taut, loving, and she started to gently caress me, determination flowing through every strand of her muscles.

" _Never_ ," Nya urged before she suddenly threw her arms around me and burrowed her visor into my neck, completely enveloping me in her passionate embrace. Her warmth flowed onto me, surrounding me with her devotion. I returned the gesture, finding that my breathing was becoming clearer, my aching similarly subsiding.

"You are," I heard her whisper in my ear, "a good man."

Finally, a smile began to crack through the self-depreciation, through the tears. The despair fizzled out in the wake of relief's heat, sending a blast of calmness to spread throughout my body.

I don't think that I could get any more validation. Maybe I could finally embrace the person that I truly was, even after all this.

 _A good man._

* * *

I woke up tangled in Nya.

Unlike last night, there was no myopia threatening to strangle me this time around, no hazy filter that had been smeared across my vision. Perception came abruptly to me as well – I felt nearly awake mere seconds after opening my eyes.

I took a breath and cool air poured into my lungs, further drawing me back to the land of the living.

The toasty warm body of Nya was still firmly pressed against me, still breathing soundly as she slept. I closed my eyes again and laid my head back, just so that I could concentrate on her breathing. She sounded so peaceful and it had a very tranquil effect on me. I yawned, actually beginning to feel sleepy once more, but of course that would not do.

I gave my wrist a shake and the chronometer app on my omni-tool activated, indicating that it was quite early in what constituted as morning on the Citadel – a mere hour before I was planning on heading back to Earth to find Eyzn. A jitter of nerves ran through me. I had never consciously traveled somewhere with the intent to kill before. I wondered if this was the kind of solution Nya would have come up with had she been given the choice.

Ah, Nya. I still did not know if not telling her about my immediate plans was a good idea. I doubted that I could come to a reasonable conclusion within an hour, anyway. Perhaps it would have been easier for the both of us if we were to simply try and forget Eyzn as best we could, pack up only what we could carry, and then spend the rest of our lives on our ship, flying from planet to planet, without a destination in mind, keeping our gaze firmly locked on the infinite horizon. Just us. Alone. No one else.

No set definitions ruling our lives anymore. A future where the only consistent factor was ourselves.

The purest expression of a peaceful existence.

As selfish and fulfilling such a future seemed… I knew that I would always be tormented by this chance to finally set things right – the dream vanished from my mind almost as quickly as it had formed. That drive was what pumped blood through my heart right now – it was what kept me awake at this moment.

It was the puppet master lifting my strings, instructing me where to go.

This barricade of violence was the last roadblock I had to traverse before I could find any tranquility.

My guilt was now making me feel all grimy – that, and the fact that I had just woken up from a nap might have something to do with that. I felt like I needed a shower, desperately.

It certainly was not an easy task, trying to extricate myself from Nya's grip without waking her. I had likened the quarian sleep cycle to that of a house cat's: quick, light naps most of the time, but when they were out of it, they were completely _sacked_. As such, it was not too difficult to try and scrunch my way out of Nya's arms – I could tenderly pry her limbs away without rousing her in order for there to be enough room to make my escape, but she was embracing me so _tightly_ that I myself was grimacing and straining my muscles (not to mention hamstrings) from the effort. Nya emitted a few whimpers as she lost her heat source and her body instinctively curled up on the bed after I had left, fingers grasping at nothing.

Now standing next to her, I marveled at the cute sight of my masked wife sleeping in her balled up form before I wandered into the bathroom. I allowed myself a hidden sigh of relief upon glancing at the shower, for although it was not as spacious as the one in our original apartment nor as luxurious, it had at least three times more volume for a person to stand in compared to the glorified tube in the hospital.

Hot water burst from the overhead nozzle, steaming up the air and boiling my skin. I let out a heavy breath from the piping respite and tiredly rested my head against the cold tile of the shower, content to prop myself up in that position for as long as I wanted.

My thoughts all cleared as the steam melted them away. I felt renewed and exhausted at the same time. Lifting my head away from the wall, my eyes still shut, I raised my arms up towards the spray in some sort of grand delusion, like I was imagining myself standing in the rain, with the end of the world all coming down around me. I opened my mouth, letting in some of the warm water, and gave a clenched smile as I was thoroughly doused.

Eventually, I mustered enough willpower to crank the shower dial to off, but I kept standing in the stall long after the water had trickled away. There was no fan blowing bone-chilling air in my direction – I simply existed in this damp state, wet and trembling.

When I did managed to step my way out of there so that I could dry myself off, I did so at a very languid pace, nearly in a dreamlike state. I pressed my face into the towel, hoping that when I took it away, the events of the last year would cease to exist and that I could wake up in my bed, roused from this nightmare, my life as perfect as it had ever been.

Now wouldn't that be nice?

After prying away the comfortable cloth, I was only partially disappointed to find myself still standing the same room, with the same thoughts running through my head as before. I mentally balked but quickly disregarded my hopes as mere delusions before I firmly tied my towel around my waist. I then approached the mirror above the sink, finding that it had been completely fogged up from my use of the shower. With my damp palm, I made a thick streak upon its shiny plain.

…which revealed Nya standing in the doorway right behind me.

Our stares were connected through the mutual reflection that the window offered, not from either of us turning to face one another.

"I was wondering if you were going to tell me or not," Nya began, confirming my deepest regrets.

I pulled a face and briefly dipped my head down from looking at the mirror. "But do you understand why I felt I had to do it?"

"I do. But that isn't your choice to make, Sam. You told everyone except me that you were going away tonight to kill Eyzn. Did you honestly expect that I _wouldn't_ find out about it?"

Her disappointed tone was almost as bad as when she had been screaming at me.

"Yet another one of my delusions," I gave a sad smile that quickly faded. "Keeping you safe is all that matters to me now, Nya. What I've done to this family… is damage so irreparable that I'll never be able to take it all back. I've been responsible for nearly killing us both because of my bad decisions. I don't want to actually lose you _because_ of this choice that I made."

"Which is why it's not going to _be_ your choice. It's going to be _mine_."

I finally turned and Nya took a step forward into the bathroom. There was no anger in our stares, our postures, our tones. Just simple, scrambling curiosity and the yearning to understand.

"Everyone else made their choice to go," Nya continued, "so I will as well. You know you can't keep me from this, Sam. I… am _owed_ this. I owe Eyzn for what he's done to me, just as you owe him for what he did to you. I can't fight that urge. I'm too… selfish to just let that go. But I _know_ you understand that feeling, the need to do unto others what they did unto me. That's why you won't fight me on this, Sam. I know you too well."

"That's why I didn't want to tell you in the first place," I admitted as I leaned back against the sink. "I always knew that I would lose this argument against you. You've always been better than me at that."

"Not all the time," Nya said as she took another step forward. "I've lost a few to you in recent memory."

"Just not this one. You do know that I'll feel better if you stay behind?"

"As long as you know that I'll feel better if I go."

I crossed my arms in a defensive posture, screaming inside my head for Nya to give in, even though there was not a chance in hell of that happening. She continued to make her way towards me until we were about a foot apart, well within the arm span of each other.

"And what if something happens to you?" I persisted with a withering look. "If you get hurt or worse… I… what do you think I would do after that? I can't even _imagine_ what would happen if I lost you!"

" _It won't be your fault_ ," Nya emphasized as she now placed her hands upon my elbows with a gentle squeeze.

"I don't care whose fucking fault it will be!" My face flushed in a sudden burst of anger. "Do you not realize that I'm trying to hold you back, to protect you, all because I love you?! I can't lose you again!"

Nya suddenly grabbed my face, her eyes hard and unnerving as her fingers clenched on my chin.

"Do not," she spoke quietly, "think for one second that you're doing me a favor. You speak of trying to protect me by keeping me in this place yet you would willingly risk _your_ life and go out to kill Eyzn all on your own. What do you think _I_ would do if _you_ got hurt, you stupid idiot?! How do you think that _I_ would feel if you needed me down there and I was up here doing nothing, too far away to do anything?! I need you just as much as you need me, so don't hide behind this so-called chivalrous behavior simply because you can't abide the thought of me getting killed. Do you know what I would do if you got yourself killed without me by your side? Well, guess what, it would be no different from what you would do and feel if the same thing happened to me. Don't push me away, Sam. Not this time. I will not accept it."

Nya finally released her grip on me, allowing me to contort my face into an expression of awe and nervousness simultaneously. She unapologetically glared back at me, eyes levelled in fierceness. She looked like she was about to say more before her posture abruptly softened, her shoulders slouching a bit, and the shape of her eyes losing their edge.

Wordlessly, I reached out to her with both hands, palms up, as I stood upright, away from the sink. Nya glanced at the offered hands, then to my eyes, then back to my hands before she accepted the gesture. I tenderly encompassed her limber palms with my thumbs, trying to feel my way through the enviro-suit to the skin and bones underneath. Her fingers slowly tightened against me, firming our grip and unconsciously making it impenetrable between us.

"You're right," I finally said, the words flowing easily from my throat. "You're absolutely right."

Nya did not react as I thought she would – she simply accepted her victory with a melancholy silence, giving me the courtesy of looking at me the entire time.

"Sam," she whispered, her voice thick and tender, "may I come with you to Earth?"

I would have sighed. Had I actually been a stupid man, I would have denied her request anyway.

But something about her asking was different. There was no resistance in her tone. She was actually placing the onus on me to decide where she might be suited best. Here… or on Earth. Could she really be so willing to take a chance on what I might have intrinsically desired? Was her safety too important for me to risk anymore?

Or did she truly know me better than I thought?

" _Yes_ ," I said, the word coming through without hesitation. "Of course, you may come."

"Thank you," Nya breathed.

* * *

Minutes later, my reflection in the full-body mirror in the bedroom gave me a taste of the persona that I effused. Tall, solid, and filled with a relentless determination. I had combed my hair (ruffled it a bit afterward), trimmed my beard so that it was cropped against my face while still retaining its fullness, and had washed myself clean of any imperfections that had otherwise lingered on my skin.

My feet filled the sturdy armored boots that clacked together on the ground, painted a matte black. Additional armor portions were strapped to my thighs, calves, and forearms. Even a separate and lightweight chest plate had been tightened across my torso.

Around my waist, a belt was snugly wrapped that doubled as a place to slot in any extra thermal clips. Ten of them filled the loops, surrounding me in a red and steel circle.

Stiff and bespoke shooting gloves were fitted around my hands, offering a tight grip. I flexed my fingers within them, finding my range of movement to be snug.

Capping off the wardrobe was the thick leather jacket that I threw about myself, over the belt and the sturdy pistol that had been locked in its holster at my side. The jacket was unzipped and was sequenced in a black and dark brown pattern upon the arms. Its warmth hugged at me, offering me an envelope of my own heat as it trapped me within its arms.

Checking the pistol one last time to see if it was loaded, I locked it back into its magnetic slot with a mechanical click. I ran a hand through my hair as I took one final breath in preparation, to dissolve the encroaching tension that had been congealing upon my very bones.

"I'm ready," I said to myself right before I wheeled about and shut the door behind me.

* * *

 **A/N: Final arc, coming right up! Months of writing and we're just about there! Thank you so much for being with me this far!**

 **Playlist:**

 **Heart Rip (Dream): "Anvil (Remix)" by Sean Murray from the video game _Call of Duty: Black Ops_**

 **The Shower/Sam's Final Admission: "To Know, Water" by Austin Wintory from the video game _ABZU_. (You absolutely need to listen to this soundtrack as it is one of the most graceful and lyrical compositions that has been written in recent years. I am not kidding, _ABZU's_ soundtrack is astounding.)**

 **Suiting Up: "Melville" by Sean Murray from the video game _Call of Duty: Black Ops_**


	23. Chapter 20: Birthright

_Munich  
_ _Austro-German Commonwealth_

It was in the middle of the afternoon and the interior of the brew-house was summarily empty, as was typically the case between the lunch and dinner rushes. About nearly a quarter of the preposterously long wooden tables were filled, with the staff of the restaurant easily able to keep up with the current demand. As such, the restaurant was quiet, relaxed, with only the muted sounds of conversation filling the room, the curved ceiling carrying and amplifying the collected noises.

Sitting alone at one of these tables, I inhaled quietly, enjoying the spaciousness and the fleeting wafts of pork roasting in the ovens.

While it might have technically been dangerous for me to be wandering an unknown city by myself, considering the kind of foe that I had garnered, I was not that worried about having to keep a low profile just quite yet. Stopping over in Munich was a necessary detour and I was nearly confident that Eyzn could not possibly have a handle on our every movement right about now (probably because Sagan had seen fit to give all of us a close examination to make sure that we weren't indirectly transmitting any information to foreign parties). If I was at all concerned, I probably would have picked a different restaurant to place my meeting at, perhaps someplace a bit less conspicuous. Yet here I sat, in the middle of this gigantic open space at a place heavily favored by the locals, right smack-dab in the middle of one of the most populated cities in the European continent.

Brew-houses, otherwise known as _brauhaus_ , were extremely popular to the Anglo-Germanic people that lived within the former borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. They consisted of one open area, almost like a humongous hallway, with broad wooden pillars interspersed in the middle of the floor that supported the roof, which all melded at the top to give the supports an artistic appearance, one that suggested that careful thought had gone into the construction of such an establishment. The staff here tended to dress in the traditional kind of garb such as specialized overalls ( _lederhosen_ ) and extremely sharp looking shoes. Live music was usually played in these brew-houses – the kind that was heavily dominated by the accordion with brass fanfares – but since most places of work in Munich were not done for the day yet, radio music was being piped in over the speaker system instead to fill in the noise gaps.

The kind of food that these brew-houses served was steeped heavily in Germanic tradition, which meant that it was terrible luck if you happened to be a vegetarian… or if you kept Kosher. It was all variations on pork ranging from choice meals like schnitzel and to several different variations on sausage. The Germans certainly knew how to make fantastic sausage – if I remembered correctly, there were over fifteen hundred different types of sausage available all over the country. Fifteen hundred! More than enough to satisfy the palate if someone wished to embark on a specific cuisine adventure in the region.

Hell, I doubted that anyone had lived a long enough life to taste each individual sausage type with _that_ kind of variety.

I decided to take advantage of my surroundings, seeing as the contact that I was supposed to be meeting was late, and I was particularly hungry. Good thing that I was in a _brauhaus_. I raised my hand to gain the attention of a passing waiter and ordered food and a drink.

Less than five minutes later (that's German efficiency for you) I was presented with my meal: a canister of two white sausages ( _weisswurst_ ) in the hot water with which it was boiled in originally, a large pretzel, a cup filled with some sweet mustard, and a tall, foaming beer. My contact still had not arrived, so I was more than happy to eat in peace. Immediately, I began to cut into the sausage and used some of the mustard to garnish it. As expected, the food was delicious, but I was trying hard not to concentrate on what kinds of meat actually made up this sausage, realizing that I might not like the answer. In this situation, it was probably best not to know and to instead just concentrate on the flavor, which _was_ satisfyingly tasty, so… that's exactly what I did.

I had finished one of the sausages by the time I decided to look up just at the right moment to see a quarian in a burnt mahogany suit look around rather forlornly near the hostess desk. He swiveled around in all directions, obviously searching for someone, and we managed to catch each other's eye a couple of seconds later, once he had calmed down enough to make a careful scan of the place. With two fingers, I beckoned him over as I was midway through a bite of pretzel and the relieved alien quickly hurried over to the table.

"Did you want anything to eat?" I asked as the quarian quickly seated himself across from me.

The man took a few nervous glances around the _brauhaus_. "I'm not sure they have anything that I _can_ eat, actually."

"You'd be surprised at how accommodating these places can be," I shrugged as I took another bite of pretzel. "They _did_ have a small dextro menu, from what I saw. Might not be sterilized to your liking, so there's that to consider."

The quarian shook his head, not interested. I did not press him anymore after that and simply took a long drink from the tall beer glass in response to wash the pretzel down.

"We should probably get introductions out of the way," I said, smacking my lips. "Sam McLeod."

"Caveh. Caveh'Saatriel," the quarian said as he tapped a finger to his chest. "And I already know who _you_ are, Ahto Da'var."

I covered my mouth with my hand to hide the small reaction that I involuntarily gave from hearing that name again. The last person who called me that had died in his own fruitless way – more bad memories were just so eager to be dredged up again, it turned out.

"I was there in the Shed, same as you," Caveh continued, his voice neutral. "We never talked before, obviously, but I was there. I saw everything during your last days there. I saw you make your suicide run against the prime. I saw you climb the rafters – I was there cheering you on. We were all… impressed with your resolve, Ahto Da'var. I didn't believe you were alive even when I had been told otherwise. Shame on me for being so stubborn, eh?"

I sighed as I leaned forward a little bit, pushing the last of the sausage to the side. "Ahto Da'var _did_ die in the Shed. I never wanted that name to be associated in the first place with me but it stuck, despite my wishes. Ahto Da'var is not my name – my real name is Sam."

"Forgive me," Caveh raised his hands, "but it won't be so easy for us to disassociate the moniker with you really are."

"Despite the fact that I don't like it?"

"I don't think it has to do with what you like or don't like. There were hundreds of fellow quarians in the Shed that saw you resist Eyzn and his forces. Apparently you succeeded in your own way, against all odds, otherwise we wouldn't be talking right now, would we? This will only increase your legend amongst the ones who made it out alive. That means the name of 'Ahto Da'var' will be the name that's being spread, _not_ 'Sam McLeod.'"

"Great," I grimaced, returning to my beer to lessen the sting.

The quarian tilted his head in confusion. "I would have thought you would have enjoyed the notion of being an idol to this many people."

"An idol sounds fine," I said after polishing off a quarter of the beer. "The idea of inspiring people is… it's humbling, to be sure. But being a legend, which is what you're making me out to be, just means that I now have an impossible task to live up to with your lofty expectations. I just want to be someone… I don't know… someone _relatable_ to everyone. Not a proud prick who can do no wrong. I will never be that person, you understand?"

"Ahto Da'var does not have to be perceived that way."

"Something tells me it's a little late for that," I scowled. "I'm just telling you to temper your expectations. I didn't get out of the Shed with my mind completely intact, you know."

Caveh absorbed this for a few seconds before making a contemplative nod. "That's understandable. It certainly makes sense given the context."

"That's good to hear," I sourly replied before I finished off the rest of my beer. Smacking the glass down onto the table, I adjusted myself upon the hard bench for a couple seconds. "But onto the business at hand. I just want to make sure that we're both caught up on the _same_ context, now. You remember giving your omni-tool address to a man named Iroa'Kannos?"

"Yes, I do," Caveh affirmed. "Rather proud looking man with yellow-gold trim on his suit? Older, probably by about a couple decades, maybe? Anyway, how could I forget? He's the one who enabled all of us to escape from the Shed when he deactivated the security sensors and the door locks, taking advantage of the damage that you had caused during your escape. He managed to intercept a group of us afterward and asked for our contact information to keep in touch. Naturally, I gave him mine. How do _you_ know him, exactly?"

"He's my father-in-law."

"I'll be damned," Caveh muttered in surprise.

"The two of us have a rather interesting relationship, shall we say. But that's beside the point right now. Iroa's been keeping tabs on all of you since your escape, making sure that you've stayed safe and that Eyzn had not recaptured you or anything like that. Near as we could tell, Eyzn's not bothered to restart his operation since it got shut down, and he's in hiding as a result."

"But…" Caveh interrupted in a hushed tone, "you _know_ where the _bosh'tet_ is? That's why you're here, isn't it?"

I smirked, enjoying the young quarian's sudden anticipation, sensing a hidden inclination for bloodlust that resonated similarly within myself.

"That was what I was going to discuss with you," I kept my voice even. "Eyzn's holed up somewhere in a city called Tel Aviv, not too far from here, relatively speaking. We're planning to go after him as soon as possible and… actually, once we're done talking here, I'm going to be getting on board my ship and heading over to Tel Aviv to finish the job once and for all."

"So if you know where he is, what it the purpose of coming to me?"

I pointed a finger at the young man. "Because Iroa seemed to indicate to me that you have some considerable sway with the rest of your comrades. I know that nearly every one of the quarians that escaped from the Shed is still on Earth somewhere, seeing as getting a ticket off-world is unreasonably expensive and you guys don't have two credits to rub together after being jailed. Plus, I also know that Iroa singled you out specifically to me because your file in the Shed indicated that you possess many leadership qualities. Eyzn was meticulous and took careful notes during each torture session. You apparently impressed him with your resolve and endurance, traits that Iroa noticed before he took flight. I figured that, if you were so inclined, it would be a walk in the park for you to get into contact with more members of your relocated brethren, tell them to lend a helping hand for us over in Tel Aviv."

I resumed picking at my sausage while the confused Caveh struggled to form a reply. I just mirthlessly chewed my food, taking on an expectant expression as I patiently waited, having all the time in the world at this point.

But my patience did have its limits.

"Even…" Caveh began, "…even _if_ I could get into contact with a few dozen of the people that I knew from the Shed, you said it yourself just a minute ago: how are we to get ourselves over to Tel Aviv without 'two credits to rub together?'"

Silently, I just reached into my pocket and procured a circular, metallic chit and slid it across the table towards Caveh. A number followed by several zeroes was holographically displayed upon the chit's face. It was easy to discern that the quarian was shocked by what he could see and I was wishing for the millionth time that it would be so rewarding if all quarians' visors were clear just so that I could mess with their facial expressions some more.

"Any more useless questions?" I arched an eyebrow humorlessly.

Caveh was now tenderly picking up the chit, probably expecting it to vanish into his palm, uncertain that it was real or not.

"You _are_ serious," the man uttered.

"What, you think that I'm going to resort to _lying_ in a case like this?" I said rather sarcastically. "That chit's got enough funds to get a whole mess of you guys over to Tel Aviv. I'm not begging, but don't know how much more I can emphasize that I want your help."

Caveh now held the chit between two fingers and lifted it so that it reflected the light off of its shiny surface. "You trust me enough to simply give this amount of money right away? We've never shared a word together until now. Don't you think that it could be quite easy for me to simply take off with this chit and leave you to your duty alone? Is that the kind of trust you're giving me?"

I made a placid gesture, my face sliding into disinterest. "Take the chit all for yourself if you want. It won't even make a dent in my finances. If that's what you choose to do then I'll simply be rather disappointed in you and you will have stained the memory of all the Shed's survivors in my head forever from your little selfish act, not to mention destroy my confidence in Iroa for his rather disastrous endorsement. I don't _need_ your help at all, but it would greatly be appreciated, and that chit is the sort of preview for how far I'm willing to go to help you should you accept my offer."

A tad embarrassed, Caveh's head tilted downward a couple angles before perking up again, trying to understand what I had just said.

"' _Preview?_ ' What exactly do you mean by ' _preview?_ '"

I shoveled the last of the pretzel in my mouth before answering the quarian's question. "I'm not an unfair man, Caveh. For what's been done to you lot, that chit that I just gave you is small beans compared to what you deserve. So I think that a little incentive might help solidify your resolve. See what you think, once all this is over and done with, I will provide each and every Shed survivor with enough money to make it to wherever in the galaxy they choose, be it the Citadel or back to Rannoch. I'd wager that many of you want to see your homeworld again – I'd certainly help get you guys back there instead of having to scrounge around the surface of this planet. I mean, Earth's a nice place, but it's not exactly home to you guys, is it?"

" _If_ we support you in this other city?" Caveh tested.

"As long as one person comes to provide assistance, everyone will be granted a way home," I said as I magnanimously spread my arms wide, knowing that I had caught Caveh with the lure that I had placed. "Oh yeah, and that I don't die as well. Can't really help you all if I'm dead, now can I?"

"Just one person needs to come?"

"Just one. But… considering what's at stake, you would probably feel a lot better if you had more than one soul come along for this trip, huh? The more hands on deck, the better the odds, wouldn't you say?"

Caveh slowly rotated the chit between his fingers, caught in solemn astonishment. The reflection of the chit slowly blinked upon his visor as the light rebounded from surface to surface. Even his eyes seemed to be glimmering more so than a regular quarian – open wide, attentive. There was a minute tremble in his fingers, apparent only when Caveh ceased moving long enough to stare at the blinking blue number that represented the amount of the chit upon the smooth and featureless face.

"So," I said as I slowly tapped my fingers on the table, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, "what's it going to be?"

* * *

 _Tel Aviv  
_ _United Israeli Republic_

"We have now entered the one kilometer range, Samuel," Sagan reported from the back seat.

With a grim expression, I yanked the steering wheel to take the four-doored sedan down yet another impossibly thin road, trying desperately not to run over any hapless pedestrians that decided to dart in front of the car without looking. The pavement was cracked, uneven, and keeping my stress level high as my senses were on overload from constantly having to check my perimeter. Who could have thought that driving in a city would be so hard?

Wait a minute…

"These assholes," I muttered as I was forced to slam on the brakes as a kid on a hover-scooter just swerved into the road with little cause for his safety. If the kid kept on going like that he was liable not to see his next birthday. Fucking jaywalkers. At least back in my day they had the courtesy to check whether the road was clear _before_ they decided to cross!

All I could do was shake my head.

Nya, occupying the seat next to me, turned to look at Sagan who took up the entire back row, his arm lit up with the glow from his omni-tool. "Are we getting a better fix on Eyzn's location?"

"Negative," the geth said, not looking up from his projected screen. "The positioning signal is rapidly fluctuating. There may be some interference from structures protruding in the way. We are in the correct area but have yet to determine a firm lock."

I scowled but said nothing. The comm decided to do that for me.

" _Same result as usual, then. We've been up and down the main avenue near the financial district at least three times_ ," Rie's voice uttered through the scratchy speaker, " _but we still have no clue what we're looking for_."

"We'll inform you once we know," Nya spoke into her tool. "We don't really know where to start looking, either. Sagan just can't get a good fix just yet."

" _Wonderful_ ," Rie grumbled.

Rie had a very good reason for being in a crummy mood right about now because her, Chandler, and Iroa were all occupying another vehicle across town that was doing the same thing we were doing in this cramped city: trying to triangulate Eyzn's location. So far, their luck in actually tracking the man down had not been so successful due to the aforementioned technical issues. This might not have been such a big issue if Eyzn had taken refuge in a farming village somewhere on Palaven, but since he had been smart enough to blend into a large city with a dense populace, this was creating a myriad of challenges for us to overcome in regards to finding the bastard.

My mood was also darkening the more and more we lingered on these tight roads without making any headway in our hunt. So far, we had spent half an hour trying to get a clear signal onto Eyzn's omni-tool but right away problems began cropping up as soon as we had started. Aside from the insane traffic crowding the streets and the tall buildings that caused our signal to cut out every so often, we learned that we could only track Eyzn only when his omni-tool was activated, which was not a constant and turned out to be rather sporadic as an event all by itself. Adding an entirely new challenge onto the affair was that Sagan had reported soon into our search that Eyzn was mobile, judging by the sheer distance his tool's address had managed to cover as projected upon Sagan's overlaid map, and to make matters worse, he was likely in a vehicle.

Great, so now we had to be on the lookout for a _moving_ target rather than a stationary one. That just added an extra spin to our problems.

"Creator Kannos has made a turn eastward onto Jabotinsky Street, headed toward Ha-Medina Square," Sagan suddenly announced right before his signal cut off again on the map.

I immediately looked in my blind spot to check if it was safe to turn the saloon before taking a left, pressing down the accelerator to give the vehicle a savage burst of speed down the empty side street. Still, it was unnerving traveling quickly down the roads in Tel Aviv and just fifteen seconds later, I hit traffic again at the next intersection and had to slow down to avoid causing an accident.

"Where the hell is he _going?_ " I grumbled as I slapped the steering wheel in frustration. "Eyzn's been taking twists and turns nonstop for the past hour. Is he headed to a particular location or not?"

We were still apparently at least one kilometer away from Eyzn's supposed location. Might as well be a hundred kilometers at this point because of how difficult it had been so far to get a fix on this bastard.

There was another groan on the comm, this time from Chandler, as his car with Rie and Iroa was undoubtedly changing their course as well to head in the direction of Eyzn's last known location. From the sounds of things, they were having just as much fun as we were.

Relegated to waiting at a red light, I could only tap my fingers upon the wheel as I could do nothing else at this point. I was not desperate enough to break any traffic laws just yet and mount the curbs like a maniac. I did not want to draw any excess attention that could be provoked from being a general miscreant… right now. Besides, I would rather not like to run over a hapless pedestrian today, something that I've already managed to almost do twice in the last hour. I already had enough on my conscience as it was.

Most of the concerns on my mind were stemming from the type of vehicle that I was driving, which was pressing more and more on my mind as long as I devoted time to thinking about it, souring my mood. Because we had landed in a new city with no transportation of our own, we had been forced to procure the services of a rental company in order to get ourselves mobile at all. Cars, as it turned out, had not progressed much technologically in the hundred and fifty year timespan that I had skipped, to their overall detriment. Most of the automobile manufacturers from the 21st century had vertically integrated their services into making spaceships once the technology had become more commonplace in order to keep up with the shifting market trends. Automobiles, once space travel had become relevant to humans, had become an obsolete method of transportation overnight. There were very few companies that classified themselves as "coach-builders" on Earth these days, and the work they did was not exactly deserving of a bespoke and exclusive nature.

Good luck finding any _new_ car that could hold a candle to a Ferrari today. Reality disappoints us all in strange ways.

Take the car I was driving, for example. It was built in North America by some company that I've never heard of, imported over to the UIR for cheap, and made with rather shoddy materials so that nothing about this car looked particularly fancy… or comfortable, for that matter. As previously mentioned, all craftsmanship went into spaceships these days – there was no room for innovation with cars anymore. As a result, the interior of this car was rather generic, the seats bordering on the edge of unbearable stiffness, the engine was eezo-powered and relatively uninspired, and the long-term quality of this vehicle was supposed to be rather atrocious to boot, according to online reviews.

At least the styling of the exterior was nice – sharp, slanted headlights with a sweeping hood that pointed towards the ground like the crest of a wave. Gentle curves lined the sides down to the trunk, which exited in twin red lines of the rear lights before converging into a singular light bar that wrapped up the entire back end of the car.

But the style of this car was not going to help us catch Eyzn. It wouldn't even turn any heads in our direction in admiration. Cars were no longer a status symbol anymore. People had become desensitized to what was now considered a common and cheap tool to be utilized.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

"Target has turned from Jabotinsky Street south onto Shlomo Ibn Gabriol Street," Sagan piped up from the back seat.

I had to decelerate to nearly a crawl before craning my head around, just in case I wasn't going to unexectedly rear-end anyone.

" _What?!_ " I was incredulous. "Eyzn was just traveling _north_ not five minutes ago! Are you sure you're tracking the right person?"

The somewhat quizzical stare that I got from Sagan was enough for me to mentally retract that last question. If the geth had an inner voice, he would probably be marveling at the fact that I had just dared to question his precise observation.

I did the calculations to the geography in my head. That put Eyzn a little more than a half-kilometer away from where we were right now, but up ahead of us were just blocks and blocks of one-way streets all headed in the wrong direction from where we needed to go. That was the problem with Tel Aviv: most of the city was built so long ago that it never really evolved to accommodate transportation for cars and the like. Smaller mobility items such as scooters and motorcycles traversed the place just fine, but for cars, it was a bit of a challenge.

"Hey, Iroa," I spoke into my tool, "you wouldn't happen to have any idea as to what the hell Eyzn's doing, would you?"

" _Not a clue_ ," the quarian's voice broke out. " _Your guess is as good as mine_."

"He's headed all over the place. North for five minutes, west for two, now he's going southbound. What kind of game is he playing? I know the whole reason he's out here is to hide from us but there's no rhyme or reason to his movements. From what I'm seeing, it's like he's going in—"

I nearly slammed on the break as a lightbulb burst to life in my head. Suddenly dizzy, I frantically checked the map several times over before I started to slow down in my lane, concentrating and trying to make the necessary adjustments to the plan in my head.

"Sam?" Nya noticed my somewhat detached state. "What is it?"

With a tight grin, I turned ever so slightly to face her. "The motherfucker's going in circles," I crowed, proud of my own deduction. I then pressed back on the accelerator as I began weaving in and out of traffic, trying to avoid being cut off by the mad locals in this town.

Less than a minute later, our car burst upon Ha-Medina Square, one of the landmarks that we knew for a fact that Eyzn had previously visited prior to our arrival. Our connection was too spotty for us to keep up a straight chase, so what I did was yank the wheel as soon as I found a parking spot on the curb and pulled the parking brake as we idled in place, biding our time instead of wandering all over the city like a chicken with its head cut off.

Ha-Medina Square was improperly named, mostly because what constituted as the "square" was actually a gigantic roundabout. A circular road surrounded a bare patch of dirt and grass that was utilized by the public as a park. There was nothing within its borders that suggested that its description as a square was at all correct. No pathways existed that even formed the _shape_ of a square within the roundabout, actually.

What, did the Israelis not have a word for " _circle_ " in Hebrew?

My little annoyances at the mislabeling of landmarks would just have to go unfulfilled while we waited for Eyzn to come back around. Sagan was still monitoring Eyzn's progress, calling out each and every change in direction, which was gradually indicating that the man was slowly headed back over to the square (circle) where we were now camped at. So far, it seemed like my analysis of the situation was correct.

Rie soon reported in that she was just down the road a ways, looking to intercept in case my idea did not pan out correctly. Nya ended up affirming in my stead, her voice slightly heightened from the rising anticipation. I too was getting a little jittery and I took a quick glance at my pistol just to make sure that it was still strapped to my side.

Trying to clear her mind in preparation, Nya now glued her gaze out of the windows to appraise the bustling nightlife of Tel Aviv.

"It's so… different," she gaped. "I've never seen a city like this before."

I too glanced out towards the packed street. "It was actually a little livelier before the war. The people here are hardy, though. They've learned how to bounce back quickly. It's in their history."

That was a bit of an understatement. The Reaper War had claimed much of the new wave of urbanization that had spread across the Middle East, which meant that most of the shiny new buildings in cities like Tel Aviv, being bigger and more apparent targets, had fallen during the conflict, while much of the older parts of the cities had been left intact. The subsequent development of these separate nations once the war was over had indirectly led to everything being set back to the status quo in terms of progress made on actual infrastructure. It was only the sheer willpower from the people in the UIR that had brought the area back from the brink, as if everyone at once had decided to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get to work rebuilding what had been destroyed.

Tel Aviv, amongst Earth's cities, was one of the first cities that had managed to significantly rebound from all the damage sustained in the war and had developed a working economy once again. All around, there was virtually no evidence that sustained fighting in the streets had ever taken place – all the damage had faded into obscurity, swept under the rug as Tel Aviv's people focused on getting back to their normal lives. Neighboring Jerusalem, comparatively and oddly, had sustained virtually no damage during the fighting and thus was able to lend its resources over to the reconstruction of Tel Aviv, which may have been a significant contributor to its rejuvenation as a city. Still, there remained a significant and noticeable absence of what constituted as a normal skyline – most of the buildings in the area we were parked in were only five or six stories high, all comprised of the same sandy-colored, wind-beaten stone. It actually looked like the complexes had been built in this weird puzzle pattern – many of the individual building levels did not line up with the ones below it, making everything look very discombobulated and uneven, yet that was a trait that just so happened to be shared across every one of the neighborhoods in this city.

Actually, there were still a few high-rises comprised of shiny glass and steel that managed to jut out from the mass of brown homes, yet they looked incredibly out of place in this environment, not at all conforming to the implicit styling. Just two dissonant approaches to architecture that clashed against one another – a nonviolent war between the old Tel Aviv and the new. The tall skyscrapers remained perched against the light-saturated night, substituting for the stars, including a mess of construction cranes that looked like spindly fingers, further saturating the timeless region. This had always been an issue in the Middle East: the rapidly approaching future threatening to undermine the trappings of the past. The evidence was everywhere, from the architecture, to the de-emphasis of religion's regulations upon the lives of people, to the attitudes of the younger populace that shunned the lifestyle of their parents in peaceful rebellion.

After all, change is the one constant that is ubiquitous to any singular concept.

Embedded around the roundabout, facing out towards the road, was a litany of shops, most of them rather high-end. I was actually kind of surprised by the low-key ritzy-ness of this place, which further emphasized the intrusion of the modern world into an antiquated environment. I would never have known that I had stumbled onto Tel Aviv's version of 5th Avenue or Saville Row just from looking at this place alone, but here we were. It was a bit weird to see the name of a well-known suit maker stamped above a dusty abode, but I was technically the foreigner here, even if this was my planet, so I just had to take all of this in at face value. There were still things about Earth that confused me to this day.

"It's just so alien," Nya uttered as she watched the stream of traffic flow by our stopped car, the cacophony of irritable horns all blending together to make a symphony. A passing delivery boy stopped to point at Nya at awe before making a timid wave (Nya waved back). Lights from the cars rebounded off the shining pavement, setting the air aglow with a thick yellow color. "There's hardly any organization to this melee."

"And it's not going to get much better," I scowled as I read an alert on my tool that had just popped up. "Local weather stations are saying that there's a storm front coming in the next hour. That's going to mess up things if we don't find Eyzn soon."

" _Rain? In Israel?_ " Chandler burst in on the radio. " _Must be a sign of the apocalypse, that_."

"Just because we're technically in an arid climate doesn't mean that this place doesn't get any rain every now and then," I responded.

" _Still, you have to admit that it's a bit odd_."

"Point taken, but it doesn't change the fact that we're going to get rained on in a bit."

" _Fair enough_ ," Chandler conceded. " _I just can't stop thinking about this city, though. How come Tel Aviv managed to get back on its feet so quickly? There's still a whole mess of neighborhoods back in Gloucester that haven't at all been rebuilt yet, let alone touched. I'm not happy – one of my favorite pubs was over in that town. That was closer to the main war zone than this place. Why didn't they build that back up?_ "

"Blame Connor Faringar for that one," I grinned as I held the omni-tool to my mouth. "He's the one who signed off on allocating a significant percentage of the recovery efforts to the UIR."

" _If I ever get close to that bastard, I'm going to get in his face and demand that he send someone over to fix my pub right back up again, mark my words!"_

"Faringar?" Nya asked after sliding in a spare heat clip into her pistol to occupy herself. "Name sounds familiar."

"He's been in the news lately. I thought he was one of those idealistic crackpots at first but his agenda apparently has some weight with the top councilors. He's been gaining traction in the political field and he's got a loyal brand of followers that make up his political party. You've probably seen the advertisements for the United Party back on the Citadel? The ones proclaiming themselves as the "Voice of Shepard" and all that crap? Tell me that you've at least heard of that annoying tagline?"

Nya gave a nod as she remembered. "The same party with the cheesy ads that promote human/quarian cooperation?"

"The very same."

"They've always rubbed me the wrong way," Nya considered. "The ads, I mean. Why does the United Party insist on bookending their advertising campaigns with the whole "Voice of Shepard" thing? Shepard's not at all political these days. He comes out of retirement maybe on occasion to advocate a completely un-hawkish stance, but as far as I know he doesn't give out endorsements. I read his memoir – he hates politicians. He even admitted to _punching_ a few in his lifetime."

I shrugged with a dry laugh. "I guess the United Party believes that if Shepard were to give an endorsement, he would give it to _them_ , hence the near hero-worship of the man amongst the party. But hell, they're probably breaking some copyright laws by using his name without permission. I would ask why he doesn't sue, but then again, that's probably none of my business."

"So why did Faringar arrange to have this city, Tel Aviv, rebuilt first?"

"Probably because of the importance of the area. The UIR is home to the most religious sites for the majority of people on this planet. That carries a very big weight for many, let me tell you. It gets you a lot of votes from some very connected and very passionate individuals. I guarantee you, the reason Faringar has gotten a ton of his agenda pushed through the government is because the UIR has had his back all this time. The Luna Drydock, Kuiper Platforms, even legislation like the Terra-Rannochian Pact was all his doing… and that all could not have been done without the support of the UIR."

Nya absorbed this and rapped her fingers upon her crossed legs. "I guess now it makes sense why they would build this place up instead of a lowly bar."

" _Excuse me_ ," Chandler's haughty tone rasped, who had been listening the entire time. " _'Lowly bar?'_ _For your information, it was a cozy brewery with the best stouts west of London. I'll have you know that it was an award-winning—"_

I thumbed the mute button on both our ends, silencing Chandler's ravings with an unceremonious blip.

"Must have been a good pub to get him all riled up like that," I smirked in good humor.

"His loss, then," Nya said before resuming people-watching again. "Such a fascinating place."

"It's different from any place on Earth that I've lived, that's for sure. It's definitely a wonder. I'd buy property here, but I'd have to get used to the food first. I've never really much cared for Middle Eastern cuisine."

There was a brief flutter of light near the top of the buildings on the other side of the square. I did a double-take, having only seen the murmur of illumination in the corner of my eye. Could the rain already be upon us?

It was endearing to watch Nya nearly press herself up against the glass of the car to take in all of Tel Aviv, much like a kid would at the entrance to a candy shop. Despite having visited several places completely foreign to her, Tel Aviv was an odd mish-mash of ideas and customs that had been entrenched for so long in the culture of the Israelis that they seemed archaic, yet there was the traditional savviness of the younger crowd that enjoyed residing within its borders, providing the legitimacy of the city's existence as a manufacturing and economic powerhouse of the region. One could understand Nya's amazement quite easily.

"I've been thinking," Nya said suddenly as she peeled herself away from the glass.

"About what?" I asked.

"Iroa."

I nodded sagely. "Yeah, I saw the two of you talking together the other day. Still getting along with him for the time being?"

"We're trying our best," Nya said openly as she brought a knee to her chest, her seat belt unbuckled. "It's not easy talking with him, knowing he's my father and all, but at least he's making a genuine attempt to be amenable, if it can be believed."

"If you had said that a year ago, I _wouldn't_ have believed it."

My wife chuckled sadly. "Neither would I."

"But at least it seems like you guys are making genuine progress. I don't know… do you think that you wouldn't mind making him a bigger part of your life once this is all over? I know that's what Iroa wants most, but is that something that _you_ want too?"

Nya fidgeted, almost as if she was embarrassed to say the first thing that cropped up in her head. She rocked back and forth for a bit in her seat – I swore that I could hear the sound of her teeth grinding _through_ her helmet from over in the driver's seat.

"I'll _never_ forget what he's done to us," Nya said evenly, "or what he tried to do to us. But if he is truly as changed as he says… and to his credit, he has provided proof for that, I think that I could begin to allow more of Iroa into my life. Slowly but surely. Things don't need to be taken quite so fast."

"Hey, whatever you decide, even though I'm proud of you for being cordial with him so far. I don't have a say at all in this matter, so I can't really make this decision on your behalf."

"Why not?" Nya eyes turned impish. "Iroa's your father too."

"No," I shook my head frantically, trying hard not to laugh. " _No, no, no_. He's my father-in- _law_. Big difference."

"Come on," Nya teased. "You're at least going to have to share this burden with me."

"That doesn't mean I'm calling him ' _Dad_.' That's going to be difficult for me, seeing as I had nearly beat the man to death months ago. It'll just be too awkward for me."

"I'll grant you that beating up your in-laws probably would be awkward for anyone."

I made a gesture towards Nya, huffing in affirmation. "You see? I am vindicated."

"But like I said," Nya now pointed a finger back at me. "Only _after_ this is all over with will I focus on making more headway with the man. I still don't trust Iroa one hundred percent just yet. Once Eyzn's out of the way, then we can focus on our odd family. Until then, I'm just going to assume that we've been walking into a trap this whole time. I'm not letting my guard down just yet."

I rubbed at my chin in aggravation, now scanning the road as the headlights from passing vehicles washed over me.

"I hear what you're saying. I've been thinking about that as well, if this is really a trap or not. There's just been something… something on the tip of my tongue. Something I just can't quite place…"

"What?"

"I don't know… it's… it's just… I'm not sure if we've accounted for all of Eyzn's horrors just yet."

Nya's leg dropped back down from her chest as she sat up straighter. Even Sagan was looking up from his analysis to gauge our reactions better.

"What makes you think that?" Nya pressed.

I sighed as I snapped my fingers as though that would spring inspiration upon me. "Something he said to me… a while back. That… I didn't know the 'entire breadth of my failure.' Even after all this, I still remember that quote… and I'm not sure what he meant by that. Was he trying to unnerve me by making me question everything I know… or does he genuinely still have something up his sleeve for us?"

"He can't have anything," Nya whispered as she stared straight off into the bustling nightlife. "He's had to run because he's _scared_ of us. There's nothing that he could possibly do to us now."

The two of us fell silent, having run out of things to say, but not completely assuaged at our own reasoning of the situation. I took several deep breaths to calm my nerves, fighting to keep myself from being on edge.

There was a soft whirring noise from Sagan's servos as the geth leaned forward in his seat up to our row.

"Proximity alert," he intoned as he lifted a shiny yellow finger, pointing it between the forward seats. "Target acquired. Daimler make, G-MAX model. Silver color."

Our heads immediately snapped up just in time to observe a gigantic six-wheeled truck slowly make its way out onto the roundabout, keeping a rather robust pace compared to the rest of the vehicles around it. About damn time. Very carefully, I put the car into drive and edged it out into the road from our parking space, making sure to keep a considerable distance so as to not be spotted.

It would be hard to lose sight of this truck, anyway. It stood on an elevated chassis, which meant that it was taller than most of the economy-sized cars here by several feet. It was also wider, which meant that it had trouble keeping in the tight lanes that were not designed with that sort of vehicle in mind. The truck was enormous and I glumly noticed that it was the perfect vehicle to absorb a great deal of punishment that most other cars could not take.

" _You got him, I take it?_ " Rie asked from her vehicle.

"Yeah," I said. "We have a visual and we're getting into position. Be ready to swing around to block him in front. Watch out, though. He's got a powerful machine."

Slowly but surely, we inched forward in the traffic, moving from lane to lane to close the gap between the vehicles. Our car fit right into the congestion – it was similarly styled and blandly colored. There was no reason for anyone to be looking at us right now.

Nya flicked the safety off an assault rifle as she slowly buckled her seat belt back in. Sagan's pulse rifle similarly whined as the charge was primed. The steering wheel creaked in my grip as my fingers clamped down upon it.

Lazily, the truck passed by the exit that it had initially made within the square on its last pass, instead choosing to make a small diversion down a side road.

"Rie, something's up," I spoke into the tool. "He's not going down your way. He's now going southwest on Tashah."

" _Great_ ," the turian sighed. " _It'll take us a couple minutes to reorient ourselves._ "

"You think he's spotted us?" Nya asked as we watched the large vehicle amble down the side street.

"Don't know how he could have," I said. "We've been doing everything right so far."

Somewhat uneasy, I turned the wheel to follow Eyzn's truck down the road, which was a whole lot slimmer than the last street we had just come off of – now down to a single lane in both directions. We had a couple of cars in between us, so we were confident that we were shielded from view, but our cover gradually dwindled away as we made another right, then a left, then another left until finally there was no one separating us from Eyzn's truck.

"What is this guy _doing?_ " I muttered as I tried very hard not to get too close. We now had a direct line of sight of Eyzn's truck but there was nothing I could do about it – I had traffic behind me ready to sound their horns if I dropped below the speed limit too much. "Now he's completely gone off the beaten path."

It was starting to become a little claustrophobic with all of these cramped buildings being tightly squished around us on either side of the road. Add to the fact that this was a one-way street and we were slowly getting the impression that we had just wandered into a serpent's nest and that there was no clear exit out of here.

"I don't like this, Sam," Nya gripped my wrist. "We need to back off, _now_."

"Yeah, you're right," I quietly agreed as I began to angle the car into an unoccupied parking space. "We've tagged Eyzn's truck, though. We can pick up the trail in a little—"

There was a harsh squeal of tires, slamming the rest of my words down my throat.

From behind an abrupt hedgerow, a van roared out into the middle of the road, having been hidden from all our views. The van made an agonizing sound as it slammed on its brakes, as did our car as I had to do the same to avoid slamming into the side of the new arrival. We all lurched forward from the sudden deceleration and numbly stared at the side of the van before the door then slid open to reveal four armed quarians aiming heavy weapons at our faces from the darkened interior.

Nimble red targeting lasers peeked out from the van and speared through the glass of our windshield, finding our faces in a heart-wrenching moment.

" _Get down!_ " I yelled before I pushed Nya down onto the center console, quickly placing my torso on top of hers as the windshield exploded inward from hundreds of searing rounds smashing their way through the glass and metal.

The noise was incredible, just the constant _crack-crack-crack_ of assault weapons discharging their rounds. Bullet holes snaked jerky patterns through the glass, sending tiny granules plummeting onto the both of us. A stray round zipped through the driver's seat headrest just a foot above me, ripping it and spewing fluff all over the back seat.

" _Sam! Nya!_ " the radio squawked. " _What's going on?! Are you all right?!_ "

I heard a click and looked back to find Sagan tumbling out of the car in a quick roll, placing himself behind a low wall and out of the line of fire. Another bullet struck the open door and it made a dull ping followed by harsh snap as it traveled cleanly through the bodywork, leaving a nice, round hole.

Half of the quarians turned to focus their fire on Sagan, who was still well behind cover, while the other two kept on trying to tear our car to pieces. Nya screamed and struggled below me, but I kept pushing her down, placing myself between her and the bullets.

"Sagan!" I roared, praying for a gap in the fire.

And a gap is what we got.

Just as a couple of the quarians paused to eject their spent heat sinks, Sagan rose from his position, pulse rifle already at the ready, and unleashed a glowing hail of aqua beams straight into the interior of the van. The beams lit up the ground as they streamed through the air just overhead, and the blue diodes of the geth made him appear all the more menacing in the darkness. The golden gladiator draped in sapphire lights.

The quarians screamed and writhed as their vehicle was assaulted with no cover for them to utilize. One quarian fell forward immediately, his body riddled and smoking, while the other three hastened to bring their weapons to bear. Nya, sensing this change, abruptly forced her way out from under me and lifted her assault rifle with a growl after racking a thermal clip into place.

I saw what she was about to do and I balked. "You aren't going to fire that in _here_ are—"

She certainly did, and the remains of the windshield were obliterated as the assault rifle boomed to life within the car. I had to cover my ears and hunker down, temporarily deafened and blinded while Nya howled as she raked her gun back and forth, finally fed up with being on the receiving end of a weapon this time around. Razor-thin beams penetrated the still air, the reverberations setting off alarms of the cars parked nearby, and miniature explosions pushed back the night's darkness, reflected off of the luminous surface of Nya's visor.

Her eyes were pointed in rage, a snarl hidden behind that helmet.

Blood splattered the far edge of the van as the vehicle was riddled with holes in two seconds. The quarians within it all slumped, completely torn apart from the combined assault. Nya and Sagan ceased their fire at almost the same time, yet the last gun burst echoed throughout the outside of the buildings long after their triggers had been pulled.

The night swallowed up the chaotic hellfire to come crashing back on us with a silent deafness.

I lifted my head from where I had been ducking down, brushing bits of glass from atop my head numbly. Beyond the pockmarked remains of the van, I could see the large outline of the silver truck screeching around the corner, having obviously heard the results of the firefight just behind it. Sagan swiftly clambered back into the car without me having to call out to him and Nya temporarily stowed her rifle in preparation to give chase.

However, the van was still parked in the middle of the road, blocking the way to Eyzn, and at the angle upon which it was situated, it was not like I could just push it out of the way with the car. Relegated to this fact, I threw the car into reverse and hastily began to back up with my foot feathering the throttle yet gradually pushing it further and further into the floor.

Taking into the fact that my driving skills were still not up to snuff (if the fiasco over in Santa Cruz had been any indication) and that going backwards was a rather disorienting feeling for any driver, that probably accounted for why the car was constantly scraping its sides against other cars innocently parked into their requisite spots. The paint made a squealing sound as it was gouged away and the car was giving horrid shudders every time I accidentally crashed into yet another obstacle, whether it be a wall, a mailbox, or a car.

"Sorry, were you _aiming_ to hit every single car back there?" Nya snidely remarked as we finally backed out into the turn.

"Goddammit, woman, don't _you_ start," I levelled a finger at her before throwing the car into drive, causing it to careen down the tight avenue. "Sagan? Going to need a little navigation advice here!"

"Target lock has been reacquired," Sagan said. "Displaying destination on your monitor… now."

The tiny screen on the dashboard then lit up to showcase the map function. A tiny red dot was blipping its way down the main streets at a rapid pace. It was making some headway, but Eyzn could no longer hide from me!

"Rie?!" Nya called into her comm as she struggled to hold on while I swerved the car directly into the main road, causing the brakes to make a tortured screech. "We've been made and we're on Arlozorov heading east towards the financial center. We need you here!"

" _I knew this was going to go brilliantly_ ," Chandler drawled over the open line.

" _Shut the hell up!_ " we heard Rie bark in response to her husband.

There was no time to wait on them. Even though we had a firm heading on where Eyzn's truck was at all times, I had to keep the vehicle in my sights lest Eyzn might decide to bail out unexpectedly and have us follow an empty truck all around town in a wild goose chase. Fortunately, Eyzn was still beholden to the whims of traffic and his truck was already beginning to get bogged down in it. Work days in the UIR ended late, apparently.

I jammed my foot hard on the pedal, but I was only getting a muted reaction in response. Despite the car utilizing electricity from an eezo reaction, the amount of horsepower being dumped into the actual propulsion systems was pathetic!

"Oh, why can't you go any faster?!" I bellowed uselessly at the steering wheel. "Stupid thing!"

Walls upon walls of cars were blocking my way toward Eyzn, whose truck was similarly swerving all over the place in an effort to escape us, trapped in a sea of red lights. Meanwhile, the enormous metal spires of downtown Tel Aviv were gradually getting closer and closer into view, appearing to be the destination that Eyzn was headed towards while arcs of lightning began to burst in the clouds overhead.

"We have infiltrated local law enforcement databases," Sagan reported from just behind me, his omni-tool going haywire with activity. "Our id-tags have now been spoofed to designate ourselves as requisite officials. This will lessen the probability of us being accosted in the future."

"That's good," I grimly replied, "because I know I'm going to get arrested for this!"

Without warning, I steered the car up and over the curb, causing the chassis to creak in response, now driving the vehicle over the sidewalk. I gunned the throttle, sending the car screaming past the parked rows and rows of traffic as the front of the car ripped up road signs, bushes, and smashed aside benches and mailboxes in its effort to creep closer to Eyzn's truck. What few pedestrians happened to be on the road screamed and dived out of the way of the car, undoubtedly confused and angry about my very stupid maneuver. I could only manage an apologetic face as half my concentration was focused on catching Eyzn while the other half was devoted to making sure I did not accidentally run over anyone.

Nya was now gripping at the edges of her seat in fear, her eyes comically wide behind her visor. With each jolt the car gave, she bounced a couple of inches into the air, giving a terrified screech for good measure.

"So much for that deposit," I glumly muttered as the leftmost side mirror was knocked off when I had veered too close to a light post.

"Forget… about… _the deposit!_ " Nya screamed before pointing at Eyzn's truck. " _Catch that bosh'tet!_ "

Mercifully disengaging from the sidewalks and giving the pedestrians a chance to catch their breath, I swerved the car back onto the road just in time to go across a bridge that spanned a highway. We were still a couple of blocks behind our target which was painfully evident when Eyzn yet again took another turn that led into the crowded city center.

But Sagan had a plan to combat Eyzn's erratic nature.

"Continue on this street for .75 miles," the geth ordered. "It will lead to a tunnel that will soon direct itself northward, evading the main intersections."

" _We'll follow him at a distance!_ " Rie yelped and we saw a pair of headlights in the back mirror peel off in the direction Eyzn had vanished down, having finally caught up to us.

Silently, I obeyed the geth's instructions, but that was all to be short-lived when yet another van came hurtling out of an alleyway and came up alongside us. I could only guess at the kinds of people that were in this new vehicle and sure enough, the quarians inside yanked open the door and readied their weapons, already locked and loaded in preparation to take us out.

"Oh… _crap_ ," I uttered as I looked down the barrels of multiple rifles aiming right between my eyes, but a new voice on the comm unexpectedly screamed out to us.

" _Slam on your brakes, now!"_

Instinctively, both feet pounded the pedal, causing us to lurch so far forward in the car that it felt like our eyeballs were about to pop out of their sockets. But directly in front of us, there was a quick, gray blur that passed just inches in front of the hood of the car, culminating in a clash of steel and sparks as a gigantic off-road vehicle slammed into the van that had just been about to open fire on Nya, Sagan, and I. The van gave a wrenching sound and then flipped on its side, creating even more sparks as the bodywork scraped along the hot asphalt, smoke and steam rising from the engine bay.

Panting hard, our car stalled in the middle of the road, we could only stare dumbly as the off-road vehicle similarly screeched to a halt next to the totaled van, only to be even more confused as the window cranked itself down and another quarian, this one brightly colored orange, poked his head out and made a friendly gesture in our direction.

"Ahto Da'var!" the young quarian called. "Caveh sends his regards!"

Inside the car, we just blinked in surprise.

"Talk about a sense of timing," Nya muttered to herself in awe.

"I'll say," I agreed before I raised my voice to call out. "Thanks for the assist! How many others came along with you?"

"Got about four in the back!" the quarian jerked a thumb in that direction. "There's also a chartered van with nine more crammed into it! We've got your back, don't worry!"

"I appreciate it!" I gave the quarian the thumbs up gesture before I restarted the car and quickly guided it into the nearby tunnel. We had some time to make up after that little deviation.

Zooming through the tunnel, it took careful concentration on my part to keep the tail-happy car from succumbing to its tendency to oversteer as I took it on the turn by feathering the brake ever so slightly. Thankfully, the tunnel was not that long and soon we burst out back into the cool night air after unintentionally sideswiping one last random car.

I took a bump too fast and the car became airborne for a few seconds. My stomach lurched and I felt a spike of fear as endorphins suddenly clouded my system. With a horrific jolt, the car crashed back down to the ground, the shock absorbers screeching in protest. The car nearly fishtailed now that its tires had something to grip on, but I quickly yanked the steering wheel back and forth in the direction of where it was tending to drift, miraculously managing to salvage the disaster that had been almost upon us.

"Creator Kannos is still delayed by traffic on the route that he selected," Sagan said. "Make a left as soon as possible to regain visual contact."

"If you say so," I gritted as I spotted a nearby alleyway the perfect size for traversing this car.

The alley was a tight squeeze and the car was constantly shearing more and more paint off its doors as I clumsily banged into wall after wall, emitting a shower of sparks, but we were proceeding at a brisk clip. Spare piping bolted onto the sides of the buildings was knocked off as I passed, throwing up clouds of searing hot steam behind us. Garbage bins placed partially into the road were clipped by the hood, knocking them askew and spilling trash everywhere, some of the rubbish even flying up into the air.

Still, I went faster.

My hands were quaking on the wheel, even more so when I was seconds away from turning and I saw the great big outline of Eyzn's truck hurry past the opening. Rejuvenated, I laughed manically and gave the wheel a quick flick, sending us screaming out of the alley, mere meters behind Eyzn.

" _Now_ I have you, tough guy," I whispered to myself with a grin.

" _Hey_ ," Rie shouted as her car darted just meters behind ours, " _you finally caught up!_ "

We were now close enough to the truck that I could make out its license plate. Next to me, Nya was eagerly reloading her rifle, taking quick glances downward so that she could see what her hands were doing. I was also shaking with anticipation, nearly salivating at the fact that I was so close! Eyzn was right _there!_

Now… I only needed to stop his truck. Easier said than done. This was a low-slung saloon. He had a raised rig. I might need to get a little inventive here.

But before I could formulate the next stage of my plan, the rear door of the truck swung open, exposing the brightly lit interior. Right on the other side, clad in shiny black armor against the blue fabric adorning his enviro-suit, was the man himself: Eyzn. Beyond him, sitting in the main bay, I could also perceive Sievra's worried expression as she struggled to hold on, as well as a few more of Eyzn's quarian lackeys as they too nervously glanced in my direction.

Eyzn did not seem to be particularly concerned as he stood up straight, his upper torso leaning out into the air as he continued to hold the door open while his other hand was clutching at something behind his back.

" _The family's all here!_ " he cried out before howling a war cry. " _So glad you two could make it!_ "

"What is he even going on about?" Nya muttered as she could only stare blankly at the crazed quarian.

Still laughing, Eyzn then lifted his left arm to show us what he was holding. I recognized the bulky construction of a grenade launcher, its enormous barrel already primed and smoking, ready to spew explosive ripples of pressure and flame in our direction.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," I groused right before the grenade launcher coughed.

I saw a yellowish streak lazily spin towards the car and I quickly yanked the wheel over to the right. The grenade hit the pavement and detonated upon impact, and an invisible wall of force abruptly lifted the back wheels of the car a couple of feet into the air, hot gases and flames licking at the rear bumper. Chunks of asphalt pelted the windshield, but the car was still functional. I gripped the steering wheel even tighter, my heart now in my throat.

"Jesus Christ!" I could not stop saying over and over.

Now Eyzn was roaring in glee as he kept trying to bring his weapon up to bear, but the grenade launcher was heavy and firing it with one hand was difficult. The weapon gave a firm kick every time the trigger was pulled which meant that Eyzn had to reorient his aim again and again. Also, the projectiles were slow, and easily avoidable given enough distance between the two cars, which I had seen fit to increase the second I had gotten a glimpse of the grenade launcher.

Eyzn steadied his arm and fired the launcher again, but his truck had hit a bump and the grenade went wide, spearing through the window of a parked car just behind us and blowing the roof and doors off of the vehicle as it exploded, sending a hail of glass and metal screaming down to the pavement.

Pedestrians screamed and ran for it. Other drivers stopped their cars and hastily tried to take different routes to get away from all the excitement. The two cars and Eyzn's truck now seemed to be the only three objects on the road that were moving, giving the all of us a perfectly clear line of sight to the other.

"That does it!" Nya growled as she finally racked the side of her rifle back, her hood rippling from the fierce wind that tugged at her body through the shattered windshield. "Keep this thing steady!"

"Oh, not again," I said but my words were drowned out as Nya pressed the butt of her rifle against her shoulder and began to open fire in short bursts, tormenting my already damaged eardrums.

Eyzn gave an uncharacteristic yelp in the wake of the red-hot bullets being spewed in his direction and he frantically tried to tug the open door of the truck back closed, but the speed of the wind streaming off of the top of the truck was holding the door open. For Eyzn, it was like the door had gained a couple hundred pounds to its weight. Nya's bullets were careening into the back of the large vehicle, punching through layers of metal and creating tiny blips of sparks. Nya was methodical with her shooting – she was not keeping the trigger firmly locked down and she was only firing once she had the truck in her sights. _One. One-two. One-two. One._ Each quick pull landed a hit on the vehicle, not on Eyzn unfortunately, but at least she was striking closer to her target than Eyzn was with his.

Sagan was also joining in with Nya as he fired his plasma rifle just behind me, sending his own vicious assault screaming through the cavernous opening where the window used to be, his plasma bolts also impacting exactly upon the truck. I had to hunker back down in my seat, keeping my head comically low while I tried my damnedest to keep myself from crashing headlong into a parked obstacle, my line of sight now obstructed by the dashboard.

Many of the windows of Eyzn's truck shattered as Nya's and Sagan's bullets/beams found their mark, sending molten globules of glass and plastic hurtling around into the interior and burning the occupants. I saw Sievra stand up from her seat and shriek, slapping at her neck frantically – a melted piece of truck must have seared her skin there.

The truck then abruptly made a left, heading back over the main highway. Eyzn hunkered down behind the door as finally managed to tug it partially closed, the barrel of his grenade launcher timidly peeking out from the side. The launcher barked again and the grenade sailed just over the top of the car, nearly shearing off the wireless antenna mount, only to smash into a light pole and shear it from its base with a sharp _thump_. The metal pole listed and creaked before tipping down towards the ground with a pathetic smashing sound.

Nya ejected a thermal clip straight out the window before launching a more rapid assault. Her bullets struck the truck's rear door in an accurate cluster, her aim only listing slightly to the left due to the jolting from the car. One of her shots actually managed to scream through the gap between the slightly shut doors and hit one of the quarian guards directly in the chest, ripping through his shields in an instant. Everyone in the truck turned in shock as they saw the man fall to the ground and eventually slip out of the truck itself, all of them now having been served an unwanted reminder of their mortality.

"I have plenty more of that," Nya crowed victoriously. "Just show me your face again, you bastard."

It was either a huge coincidence or simply perfect timing because amazingly, Eyzn seemed to take Nya up on that challenge even though he had never heard her statement. The man cracked the door open wider to let off one more shot, fighting to stay stable even though the truck was now rattling around wildly.

But Nya took her shot first.

A three-round burst, executed perfectly, erupted from the barrel of her rifle. Eyzn yelped as all three of them careened into the large launcher, rupturing it, and sending jagged metal shards flying backwards across the truck's interior, one of which spiraled right into the neck of another quarian seated on one of the benches, who also collapsed with a wet gurgle, blood pooling from their body. Instinctively, his hand throbbing in pain, Eyzn dropped the ruined launcher and as it hit the road, the gigantic clip was dislodged from the main chamber, irreparably cracked, and the ruined weapon continued to splinter itself to pieces as it rolled upon the ground.

Weaponless, Eyzn screamed for the driver to make another left, a move that I copied effortlessly. We now appeared to be in an area of swanky high-rises, and unless my eyes were deceiving me, we were on a direct course for the tallest building in the entire city, one that was a spiraling point of steel and glass, all surrounded by construction cranes as part of a renovation project on the uppermost floors.

The roads were clear and we were flanked by wide walkways that gave way to circular gardens filled with hardy shrubs to withstand the Israeli heat. Now was as good of a time as any to make my move.

"I'm putting a stop to this!" I yelled out to alert everyone in the car.

The car was lighter than the truck by several hundred kilograms, which meant that it was able to accelerate faster regardless of the fact that the truck had a much bigger engine. Darting forward so that the hood of the car was just beyond the two sets of rear tires on the truck's right side, I kept my right foot steady on the throttle, with my left foot hovering over the brake in case I needed to abruptly decrease velocity in case the driver of the truck wanted to ram me off the road.

It was just as well that I took my chance before anyone else.

Snarling as I yanked the wheel to the left, the high beams momentarily illuminated the silver paint of the truck as I steered right _into_ it, momentarily blinding me. I then had a brief moment of clarity as I could see the resulting impact _before_ I felt it, strangely enough. It was like my brain had deliberately slowed itself down, making me immune to the effects of the corporeal realm, letting me soak in the silent and beautiful violence before I could catch up to it all.

The hood of the car crumpled against the truck's wheels and everyone in the car was suddenly slammed forward like a giant's hand was shaking our car back and forth in a firm grip. The resulting blow that had been delivered, though, was enough to make the truck skid off course, its back wheels now out of alignment. As expected, the inexperienced driver of the truck yanked his wheel to the left to counter the effects of the pit maneuver, but the truck's massive weight was merely working against him, as everyone in the transport was about to learn. The truck was tall, with a high center of gravity, already traveling at over sixty miles an hour. At that speed, coupled with the driver's attempted countermeasures, the truck quickly swerved to the left, but at too severe an angle and way too fast.

The truck's chassis squealed as the left side of the transport started to tip over, three of its six wheels now hanging uselessly in the air. It was too late to do anything at that point and the huge vehicle tipped onto its side in an instant, shaking the entire frame and gouging the road below it, creating a mass of white scratches onto the pavement coupled with flaming sheets of sparks. The metal of the truck made a torturous noise as it continued to skid along the row, helpless like an overturned turtle.

I pummeled the steering wheel in excitement, Nya similarly bouncing up and down in her seat. "Got you _now_ , you mother—"

I could not see the short erected wall that the truck plowed into that caused its orientation to spin around slightly, now sweeping its rear wheels toward our car. We were travelling too close to the truck and when I saw the radial tires heading in our direction, my first thought was that it was quite odd to have this sort of view of a sideways truck's tires threatening to crush us like this.

My next thought was to slam on the brakes, which I did a little too vigorously.

There was a clunk and the brake pedal suddenly lost pressure. They had locked up. The car continued to lurch forward too fast, way too fast… right into the row of cylindrical gray bollards.

" _Sam!_ " Nya cried out a second before I threw an arm over her to restrain her from the closing impact.

It was over in less than a second.

One moment we were traveling at a brisk clip, the lights of the Tel Aviv night whisking by our windows, the next we had stopped with a sickening crunch, our bodies thrown forward against the dashboard as our seatbelts cut into our skin to keep us in place. I gave a grunt as my head smashed against the steering wheel, but I kept the arm that held Nya rigid, refusing to bend. A headache splintered into my skull. There was a thick taste of blood in my mouth.

And then we fell back into our seats, breathing hard and blinking dumbly.

"I swear," I murmured around the metallic taste on my tongue, the ticking noise of the ruined engine spearing into my brain, "I will never, ever, _ever_ drive another car for the rest of my life. I just can't… stop… crashing them."

Quit while you're ahead, as they say. Probably the best idea I've come up with in years. I was now three for three on my last sojourns where I had set out in a car… only to have it end up in pieces and with me sporting an injury of some sort.

And then there also was that time where I had tried to kill myself _using_ a car… but we don't talk about that period of my life these days anyway.

Nya groaned next to me, momentarily clutching at her chest. Her breathing was ragged, but it was uninterrupted, unbroken. She probably had a few bruises on her chest, but that was probably the worst of her injuries. Behind me, Sagan was moving around just fine, completely unharmed.

I felt blood running down the sides of my nose and I tenderly felt the area, checking to see if I hadn't broken anything. There was no immediate pain, which was a good sign, but I was still bleeding extensively from a cut right between my eyebrows. Muttering curses underneath my breath, I grimaced as I shifted my hips so that I could procure a tube of medi-gel from my pocket and squeeze out a dollop of the stuff so that I could put it on the deep wound. There was a slight tingling sensation from the anesthetics in the gel and very soon I was unable to feel the cut at all.

Nya reached into the glovebox and provided me with a cloth to wipe my face, keeping silent the whole time. She was not going to lecture me on keeping myself in tiptop shape, but she understood the importance of me keeping up better appearances. The blood was easily wiped off and I handed the cloth back to Nya with a nod of thanks.

"Acceleration dampeners…" I was coughing as I kicked the door open so that I could finally extricate myself from this death trap. "Who thought… acceleration dampeners as a safety feature was a _good_ idea? I still fucking hurt. What was wrong with keeping air bags in cars? Why did they get rid of them? Fuck's sake… _acceleration dampeners_ …"

Again, bitching about the past was not doing any of us any good… but it still felt cathartic to voice my grievances out loud. Call it my method of coping.

I felt around my waist and realized that I was missing a crucial item. I ducked back into the wrecked car to retrieve my pistol, which had fallen into the foot well during the crash. As soon as I was stumbling back out, I heard a rumble of an engine behind me. I turned to find Rie's car finally catch up to us, the occupants inside looking a little wide-eyed, and not just from seeing our car completely trashed.

The windshield of Rie's vehicle was cracked, but not completely blown out like had happened to our car. The turian quickly jumped out of the car as soon as she put it in park and ran over to the other side where Chandler was sitting. The human had a pained expression on his face and I could see that the side of his jacket was stained a dark color. Iroa, unhurt, left the confines of the car to join Nya, Sagan, and I outside.

"What happened to him?" I asked as Rie helped Chandler out of the car, which appeared to be a difficult task as the human was heavily listing to one side. I hurried over to take Chandler's other arm, propping the man up between the two of us.

"He took some shrapnel when the grenades were going off," Rie sighed bitterly. "He did a decent job patching himself up and he's stable for now, but he's not going to be of much use to anyone for the time being."

"Sorry… guys…" Chandler gave a shaky smile. "I wanted… to be there… at the end…"

"Oh, shut up," Rie scowled. "You're not dying. You're only going to have a scar at the end of this, so _pipe down_."

The two of us gently set Chandler down on the curb, propping his back up against one of the tall bollards. Chandler pulled a face and resumed clutching his side, his hands stained with dried blood.

"Is he going to be all right?" I gestured to my friend.

"Unfortunately for him, yes," Rie nodded right away.

A crumbling sound from behind us caused our attentions to be drawn towards the noise for a split second. From where the overturned truck had finally stopped, one of its side doors had apparently detached from its hinges and had fallen onto the cobblestone walkway, the source of the earlier noise. From just beyond the wreckage, all of us had a glimpse of the retreating forms of Eyzn and Sievra as they booked it towards the tall high-rise, the one still under construction, at a frantic yet wobbling pace.

Anguished, I turned back to Chandler and Rie, my heartbeat starting to pound out of control.

Gritting his teeth, Chandler managed a weary look. "Go get him."

I placed a hand on his shoulder in assurance. "Will do. Thanks for everything."

The four of us that then proceeded to plod in the direction that Eyzn had headed made a motley squad: me, Nya, Sagan, and Iroa. We were all bruised, battered, and bloodied, and at least two of us were limping. Still, we grimly staggered across the wide concrete walk, our weapons clutched in our fists, our eyes dead set on our destination.

Just then, the roar of an accelerating engine caused all of our heads to snap to the left as another large truck began to rush our position. We stiffened instinctively, too paralyzed to run for cover. Regardless, we were completely exposed out here – the nearest fortification for us to utilize was at least a good ten seconds away from where we were… and that was if we were to take it at a run. Dumbstruck, all of us could only raise our weapons and kneel in a firing position as we watched ten armored quarians jump from the rig and take up tactical stances against us, ready to fire on command.

Things looked hopeless. We had let our guard down way too early. Some part of my brain screamed out in denial at being robbed of my chance at revenge.

"Just how many guys does this prick _have?!_ " I groaned, echoing everyone else's sentiment.

Yet no one fired. Not from our side and not from theirs. Instead, we were all captivated by the arrival of two _more_ large-wheeled vans that quickly converged on the square from two different directions, stopping between us and the group of thugs as the tires skidded on the pavement, providing us a new shield to hunker behind. We now had an unobstructed route to the apartment complex but we were still rooted to the spot in amazement as nearly thirty quarians barreled out from the two vans, Caveh leading the charge, all armed with a varied assortment of weapons.

"Don't even think about it," Caveh called out to the opposing group, who were now obviously unnerved by this new development. Many of them were looking at one another in apprehension and a deep-seated confusion, now uncomfortably aware of their chances of surviving this encounter.

"I _told_ you," Iroa said triumphantly to the rest of us as he made a singular jump in glee. "I knew they wouldn't let us down!"

Before any of us could stop him, Iroa suddenly ran between the two vans and over to where Caveh and the other former prisoners had created their own firing line. Iroa did not lift his own pistol, however, and proceeded to step in the middle of the potential melee, holstering his weapon so that he could spread his hands to show that he was approaching without bringing with him the threat of violence.

"All of you," Iroa called out as he turned himself sideways, each arm beckoning to each group, "lower your weapons. Put them down, _now_. There is no reason for us to have this quarrel anymore. It is _over_. It's _done_."

"What are you—" Caveh began, but Iroa silenced him with a shake of his hand.

"Put them down," Iroa ordered again, and Caveh's group timidly complied. Eyzn's group was still aiming across the square, but their aims were trembling all over the place as they became more and more unnerved.

Nya and I hung behind the trucks, anxious at what might happen from this.

Iroa now took a step to the opposing group. "You no longer have any allegiance to Eyzn anymore. He's not here – he's fled and left you all behind. Don't throw away your lives for one man's greed. Remember what he took from you! This man tortured you! What sway does he hold over you now? Nothing, that's what. He can't hurt you anymore."

My father-in-law then made a sweeping motion with his arm to the quarians all congregated behind him, the golden silk of his hood dimly flapping in the dry breeze.

"Look at all of us! Your people made it out alive, away from Eyzn! It's not too late to save yourselves. Put your weapons down, come home with us. Come back to your families. You've been missed so terribly. We'll take you back to Rannoch, where no one can hurt you. Eyzn will never lay a finger on you again. All you need to do… is put the guns on the ground. You don't have to be afraid. We can help you. Just… please… come home."

Iroa's impassioned plea remained in the air long after the words had left his lips. The dusty sea breeze was barely making a ripple now, the plants had stilled their movements, and even the normal sounds of the city had all seemed to quiet under the fragile gaze of the shaking gun barrels.

All it would take was one barrel to point away.

And in mere seconds… a gun dropped to the ground with a clatter.

One of the quarians on the far end of the square had a blank look in his eyes as his rifle slipped from his fingers. Soon after, he started to make unintelligible noises as he dropped to his knees and bent his head, making retching noises as he dry heaved, one hand propping him up while another was clutching at his stomach. His body was seizing up from his attempts to vomit and from the sudden sobs that were escaping his throat, but these were not simple sounds of anguish, they were full-blown wails that comprised a lifetime's worth of terror at the hands of Eyzn. All the torture, the pain, and the mental rape this quarian had endured, he was throwing it all up like an infectious tar, a poison purged from his body.

The young man soon slumped to the ground, coughing and weeping so uncontrollably that he no longer could move himself.

That opened the floodgates. It seemed to sink into the rest of the quarian secessionists that another life existed beyond the one they had been living for months on end. They could be free, live without pain and fear, and would not have to hurt anyone else anymore.

The rest of their weapons tumbled away, too.

Many of the quarians were taken by emotion like their first cohort, completely overcome with guilt to the point where they were throwing up in their suits. Relief hammered them hard, like blows to the head. Dizzy and nauseous from the mere inclination of a way out, they all staggered and fell weeping, crying, and sobbing for forgiveness.

"Go to them," Iroa beckoned Caveh and the rest as he turned to gesture them forward.

The free quarians, to their everlasting credit, did not hesitate. They eagerly discarded their guns, leaving them carelessly on the ground, and rushed over to the incapacitated group with open arms, reuniting the dysfunctional but connected family back together. The quarians embraced each other, brother to brother, reassuring them that everything would be okay, welcoming them back. Tears flowed on both sides and most had to sit down, too overcome with emotion to stand up. The crowd sank to earth as one, completely overwhelmed with happiness that their war was finally over and done for good.

Never again would they turn a weapon upon each other.

The indoctrination had finally been shattered.

"I lied to them, you know," Iroa whispered as Nya and I approached him. "I made it seem like I would be accompanying them back to Rannoch. They can return, but I still can't. Exiles can never make it back to the homeworld."

"They…" Nya reached out a hand to touch her father's shoulder, "…they can take it back. They can rescind your punishment."

"Thank you, Nya, but… I don't think that's ever going to be a possibility. I haven't done enough to warrant that privilege."

"You're wrong," Nya whispered as she pointed to the cluttered group of quarians who were comforting one another. "You did so much more."

Iroa politely chuckled as he took his daughter's hand gently. "It doesn't matter. I never did this with the intention of receiving any _reward_. I'm just thankful for what I have now. This is enough for me."

"Still," I now said, as the four of us left the weeping group of quarians alone and headed over to the apartment building, "it's kind of ironic. In the end, I guess they really didn't need Ahto Da'var at all."

Iroa made a harrumphing noise of disbelief. "Are you quite sure about that?" he whispered almost impishly.

I did not have an answer for him as we entered the elevator bay past the lobby and stared at where the one lift that was currently in use was headed for right at this very moment: the penthouse.

Going up.

* * *

 **A/N: And here... we... go.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Initial Shootout: "Terraforming Bay" by Jed Kurzel from the film _Alien Covenant_**

 **Chase Pt. 1: "Bloodstained Anthem" by Ludvig Forssell from the video game _Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain_**

 **Chase Pt. 2: "STALKER Theme" by Borislav Slavov from the video game _Crysis 3_**

 **Eyzn's Group Surrenders: "Out of Bullets" by Thomas Newman from the film _Spectre_**


	24. Chapter 21: Flesh of My Flesh

The uneven and textured layers of Tel Aviv rapidly fell away in seconds as the elevator shot up towards the top floor of the loft complex. Eighty-five stories cleared in less than a quarter of a minute. I had to plug my nose and try to breathe out as best as I could so that I could quickly adjust to the rapid changes in altitude. All these advances in technology and still no antidote for altitude sickness had ever been created yet, much to my annoyance. Tiny globules from lamps and headlights all throbbed below in a strange but wondrous cycle – much like blood being pumped through a vein. The light pollution created a bright aura amongst the sky where only the landing markers of starships and the glow of the moon could be immediately discernable through the intangible fog.

Lightning raged against the approaching storm front, arcing out in front of the cloudy wall. Drops of rain began to splatter against the glass of the elevator only to quickly be forced down from the sheer velocity in clear streams as we traveled up and up. What stars could still be observed were quickly swallowed up by the thick clouds, trapping the entire city in a humid bubble.

The changes in air pressure caused a few of my deep-set wounds to distantly ache. I hid a grimace of surprise and quickly clenched a fist to concentrate on sensations far more important than the own agony I carried.

So close. I could not falter. Not now.

The four of us – Nya, Iroa, Sagan, and me - were too on edge to even speak to one another. Perhaps we all intrinsically knew that there was nothing more to say. Final apologies were useless, as were any inappropriate efforts to try and inject some humor to lighten the mood. The stakes were simply too dire and our heart rates were all probably beating so fast (sans Sagan) that it felt like, if we were going to open our mouths, we would throw up from sheer panic.

" _Penthouse level_ ," the elevator chimed in a cheery female voice, which was probably a little too upbeat for the implications that hovered over us right about now.

"Get ready," I announced as I unslung the shotgun from the strap upon which it had hung about me. There was a subtle clicking series of sounds coming from everyone else checking to see if they were locked and loaded.

Then the door to the elevator, on smooth and oiled rails, slid open with nary a problem.

Many more problems presented themselves in the next moment.

A hail of blistering sapphire bolts instantly smashed themselves into the far wall of the lift, the air vibrating as the lines of plasma pushed aside oxygen atoms for the duration of its trajectory. They spewed in from the right side of the hallway, the assailant currently hidden around the corner, out of our views.

"Get back!" Iroa shouted as everyone immediately crowded the rear of the elevator, safely in cover from where the incoming fire was angled.

The side of the lift was all charred and smoking and parts of the metallic wall had started to melt from the intense heat, dripping down the still solid sides to crumple in a semi-hardened state near the floor. A few of the plasma bolts had boiled through the glass of the elevator with ease, leaving behind perfect circular holes rimmed with glowing red edges, microscopic cracks beginning to spread out from where the glass had ceased to exist.

The rapid-fire attack quickly stemmed and there was a heavy sound of a plasma casing being ejected out in the hall that presumably led to the entrance of the penthouse – a solid clanging upon the polished tile as a thick and heavy container was carelessly deposited onto it. Whoever was mounting this assault, they were staying put in their position, wise enough to not charge all of us right now, even though we were pretty much cornered.

My mind frantically spiraled in all directions, desperate to imagine how to get out of the lift, first and foremost. We couldn't just go back down a couple levels, there was no alternate route up here and every second we wasted would just give Eyzn more time to mount an escape. Blindly charging in was not on the shortlist of good ideas, either. What use was trying to mount an offensive when we were at a severe disadvantage? I had to face facts - we were thoroughly overpowered and pinned down. The odds were not looking good regarding our forward progression.

"Single shooter," Sagan reported after a brisk analysis. "Plasma turret. Centered location. The target is geth. Prime class."

" _Geth_ ," I murmured. Eyzn's Geth – acting as a doorman. How could I forget the careless brutality the prime had done to me in the Shed? That… _thing_ had broken my bones and pummeled my body without as much as a second thought, like I was a mere shrub in the face of a hurricane. To have to face it again…

Instead, Sagan gently pushed himself closer to the door, in front of the entire group. The geth switched his rifle to his left hand while, on his right arm, a reddish-orange shield quickly folded into life, a sturdy hologram made out of pure hard light.

"What are you…?" I began but Sagan turned to face all of us, the twin blue optics that made up his "eyes" rapidly rotating in place to form a vertical line.

"We will commence engagement in your stead," the geth calmly announced as he hefted his weapon.

Nya jolted against me. "Sagan, no! That prime's too powerful!"

"We are sufficiently equipped to mount an attack," Sagan reassured her. "There is no need for you to get involved, Creator McLeod."

"You'll be torn to pieces!"

"But _you_ will be safe," Sagan emphasized.

Helpless, I could only reach out and clutch at Sagan's yellow armored wrist. He turned to look at me, the flaps on his head extending only once for a beat, something that I interpreted as an expression of softness. The synthetic muscle underneath the armor relaxed and the geth became gentle, almost malleable in my grip.

"Sagan… I…" I stammered, beside myself for a moment. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to. We're not asking this of you. All this time… you've _always_ had the right to make your own choices. Are you sure this is what you want?"

The three limber fingers of the geth minutely flexed forward and backward, as if caught in a feedback loop. Sagan's blindingly blue optics focused and refocused while his posture similarly slumped and straightened. I kept holding onto Sagan's wrist, utterly perplexed and torn at what to do. The geth was making jerking motions that were only growing in intensity, further made apparent when Sagan tried to speak next.

" _W—e… w…e… we-we-we… Wwwww… Eeeee…_." Sagan groaned for a long moment until there was a soft click that seemed to emanate from his chest.

"Sagan?" I implored as I nudged the geth's arm.

" _We… We… We… WeeeeIIIIII—I, I, I, I._ I. I. I." The geth abruptly paused and ceased his pronunciation of that singular word… that _wonderful_ word, and seemed to inflate, as if he was taking a deep breath. "I," Sagan said, confidence encroaching upon his tone. "I. I… I _want_ to do this. I _want_ … to help."

Silence befell the elevator. Even the lightning outside seemed to give a blessed pause. The rain made a gap, giving us this quiet and ponderous moment where every torturous millisecond had to be crashed through like glass as all of our perceptions slowed to an excruciating crawl.

 _That… what he said…_

Sagan dipped his head apologetically before he straightened up, looking ever much the proud geth warrior as he beheld his shocked audience. "Don't worry, Sam," the synthetic's gentle voice intoned. " _I_ will protect you."

If all of us were not already all so hopped up on adrenaline, I think we probably would have collapsed in surprise right there.

" _H-How?_ " Nya could only gasp out, a hand outstretched to scrape against the geth's golden chest plate – an affirmation that he was indeed corporeal and not a mirage.

Far from a mirage, actually. Only now… he was more than he had been before.

In that moment, Sagan truly began to live.

We could not stop the geth as he quickly rolled out into the hallway, straight out of the confines of the elevator. Immediately, the blasts from the plasma cannon picked right back up again with the intent on disintegrating the new combatant, gouging the white tile floor and leaving black scorch marks, but Sagan was able to dive for cover on the other side of the hall, behind a raised garden feature where a couple fake shrubs had been slammed into place. Sagan's shield on his arm furiously sparked as a couple plasma bolts made contact, but it still held, protecting its owner perfectly, humming with a resounding energy.

"I don't believe it," I heard Iroa murmur beside me. "The concept of self. I didn't think a geth could think like that so quickly."

"Sagan's not just any geth," Nya replied in awe.

Our hearts in our throats, Nya, Iroa, and I all peeked our heads out of the sides of the elevator as best as we could, hoping that we could at least get a shot off towards our foe, but the angle was still pretty bad. The massive prime, Geth, stood in the middle of the hall, a large set of double doors tantalizingly positioned right behind its huge frame – our final goal. Gaseous lighting streamed down its shining red armor and its trio of red optics blazed a hellish hue. The prime stomped its feet and the huge cannon strapped to its arm hummed menacingly, frothing energy eager to foam its way out of the superheated barrel.

An earsplitting growl then groaned out of the prime and the enormous synthetic readied its weapon in preparation for Sagan to jump back out into its line of fire again, the cannon already whirring. " _Interloper_ ," Geth boomed for the first time, its voice deep and throaty, "you are to cease all aggression and allow yourself to be dispensed with properly. We are Geth and we will carry out our orders. My master is not to be acted upon."

"Your master will be dealt with summarily," Sagan called from where he was hunkered down. "The aggression will not cease."

The prime took another dangerous stomp forward. "Comply," it demanded. "Additional warnings will not be given."

Sagan's torso briefly lifted up, reminiscent of a laugh to my eyes.

"Additional warnings will not be needed."

In the blink of an eye, quicker than any organic could react, Sagan sprung up from behind the fixed plantation, his shield positioned in front of him, his feet gripping onto the slippery floor as he sprinted at full-tilt towards Geth, his own rifle spewing heat and death. Geth staggered as miniature explosions rippled over its body and, with a wavering _snap_ , the prime's shields shattered and crumbled in electric bits around it. Undeterred and strangely uncaring towards the loss of his crucial barriers, Geth began firing onto the onrushing Sagan as soon as he was out in the open, my friend's own shield bending in response to the punishing onslaught to the bolts that made it past his omni-shield. Still, Sagan ran, and still, Geth fired.

Geth's turret ramped up the rate of fire and blue flames began to lick at Sagan's body. I could see Sagan's shields visibly straining underneath the stress of the plasma bolts but he did not make an organic cry in response. No shout of rage. No scream of denial.

He just continued to run.

Ten meters to go… then seven… then five… three…

Sagan's shields made a squealing sound as they finally cracked and splintered, aqua shards were now being projected into the air like shards of glass. But Sagan had finally reached Geth and had retracted the additional omni-shield on his arm.

No… he hadn't retracted it. Rather, he had _reformed_ it. Now, instead of a wide, flat, glowing surface, the omni-tool had morphed into a razor-sharp line, a _sword_ , emanating in a fine point that extended half a meter further from his arm.

Having reached terminal velocity, Sagan abruptly dropped to his knees, his unmarred armor effortlessly sliding across the perfectly polished tiles. With surgical precision, Sagan swiped his omni-blade parallel to the ground and sliced clean through Geth's right leg, just above the ankle, with a searing _snap-hiss!_ Bits of crimson armor burst out the back of the cut and the severed wiring sparked angrily, a trail of heat blistering from the arc Sagan's blade made.

The prime gave a slight stumble before quickly pitching towards the floor, its severed foot still standing upright just behind it. Geth held out its arms to catch itself, but the jutting barrel of the plasma cannon crumpled as the complete weight of Geth was placed upon it once it had fallen, finally snapping off before both of Geth's hands could make contact with the floor. Geth clawed at the ground to try and propel itself forward, but was unable to find purchase and it let out an enraged, electronically-tinged bellow.

From behind it, Sagan stood up, his skid having ceased, and quickly walked back over to where Geth was crawling along the ground. Sagan stepped around the fallen prime and then moved right in front of it, his body language neutral, but I could definitely get a vibe of dispassion coming from him. Geth's trio of blazing red optics blankly stared up at the triumphant Sagan, almost like an organic would if they were going to beg the victor to be merciful.

But this conflict was different. It consisted of one geth pitted against another. Mercy was merely an illogical concept to these two.

Or perhaps… it might yet have attained a modicum of logic for one of them.

"You are not geth," Sagan stated right before he shot his arm forward and clamped his fingers down around Geth's optic assembly. The prime squealed in response to intangible pain as its circuits were crushed from Sagan's grip while sparks were beginning to spit out from where its head was as its construction was rendered out of shape.

Sagan continued to clutch onto Geth's optics, his fingers contracting more and more, crunching metal and glass, sending tiny bits of debris tumbling to the floor. The prime, now blind, made howling noises and its limbs jerked and thrashed, unable to shake Sagan off while more and more of its systems found failures and errors imparting themselves upon it.

Finally, Sagan yanked his arm backward.

There was an explosion of metal as Geth's optic assembly was _ripped_ out from its head. Metal and polymer were sheared away with a violent glimmer of light melting around the prime's head. Electricity briefly arced and Geth's three optics came away in Sagan's hand, a tangle of wires still trailing from the synthetic's molding. White, artificial blood gushed from the opening in the eyeless prime's head, splashing around Sagan's feet in a thick puddle.

The prime became listless, each synthetic muscle strand loosening from the lack of processor commands. In seconds, Geth collapsed in its own remains with a gigantic crash, no more noises being uttered from its chassis.

Calmness was restored to the hallway.

Tentatively, I stepped out into the hallway for the first time, Nya and Iroa right behind me. I was breathing heavily even though I had not been doing any of the fighting. Incredulous and excited, I jogged forward to congratulate Sagan on his achievements but halted at once when Sagan turned around to face us.

I froze and my eyes widened. Iroa muttered a soft curse behind me. Nya gasped in horror.

Sagan, not at all in any pain, did not even look at the three smoking holes in his chest from where the plasma cannon's rounds had made contact. He stuttered forward a half-step but quickly stopped, looking lost. His optics found us and his head flaps twitched once in recognition.

" _Nya?_ " Sagan whispered.

Then he fell.

My mouth turned dry in an instant as I raced forward to where Sagan lay. Shoes squealing on slick ground, I nearly threw myself upon the geth's limp form as I came up to him, my entire body now turning cold.

"No…" I mumbled as I made to turn Sagan over. "No, goddamn it, no!"

But there was nothing I could do. The light in Sagan's optics had darkened. The diodes upon his body were no longer blinking attentively. There were no minute noises being emitted from his torso that would indicate any processes that were still active. Sagan's still lenses stared up at the ceiling, his final appearance coming across as one of peace. He had found pride that his last action could truly define him amongst those he had come to care about.

What a cruel galaxy this was for that to be his last lingering thought.

My useless hands trembled as they hovered over Sagan's body, unsure of what to do. Tears were fighting to be released from my eyes and my cheeks were rapidly growing hot while my teeth ground shards of themselves away in my mouth. Angrily, my fingers furrowed in on themselves, digging into the skin of my palms, drawing blood. Even as Nya moved to lay a hand on my shoulder, fighting back sobs of her own, there was little to dispel the encroaching fire that lit up my head like a bonfire.

And Sagan's death had been the fuel.

" _Fuck!_ " I screamed as I slammed the stock of my gun through a nearby vidscreen, shattering it, and sending glass sprinkling all over the ground.

It was unfair, so unfair! Why did Sagan have to go out this way? He had been _alive_ , damn it! Right then and there, he showed us all that he was just as alive as we were! Who decreed that he had to perish here? It shouldn't have been him! Not after such selfless actions!

Perhaps in the end, Sagan had truly understood life better than I did. Maybe he had realized that saving a life was more rewarding than trying to preserve your own.

He had been better than all of us. I could not let his sacrifice be meaningless!

"I'm going to kill him," I growled as I moved away from the sparking remains of the vidscreen. I helped Nya back to her feet and the remaining three of us reverently edged around Sagan's body after folding his hands over his chest, making his final rest appear so peaceful. "I'm not leaving here until Eyzn is in pieces at my feet, I swear to god."

Before we entered the unlocked penthouse, I spared a final, forlorn glance at my fallen friend. This would not be the end for him, I silently promised. I would make sure that he would be taken care of once this ordeal was over. Mark my words, I was going to make sure that _everyone_ would know of the fulfilling life that Sagan had managed to achieve!

I had to do this for him, because he deserved so much more.

Simmering with the broiling anger that yearned to be unleashed, I pushed aside the double doors and walked determinedly into the darkened interior of the penthouse. Barely any of the lights were on, allowing the rapid lightning flashes to sear across the polished wooden floor as well as the inane shapes of the holographic advertisements that bloomed from the city below. The abrupt illumination threw shadows across the cavernous room, revealing that most of it was still undergoing construction of some kind. Rafters and gangplanks were bolted into the sides of the walls, leading to catwalks that spanned the ceilings and led outside, right near the wide and thickened windows. Dusty tarps lay draped over the metal skeletons of the risers and strewn cables littered the floor, surrounded in dirtied footprints from the workers that had been here.

Finally, standing in the middle of the room, a wall of windows at his back, was Eyzn.

A pistol was strapped to his side, no other weapon immediately visible. Sievra was near him, nervously pacing back and forth, both of her swords clutched in her hands. Oddly, a tall and thick object that looked like a pedestal of some sort came up to the midpoint of Eyzn's chest, colored a delicate mahogany. The lighting was too poor for me to determine what it was, so I barely spared it a second thought.

Some sort of shimmering barrier, transparent but quite visible, tinged an electric blue, created a wall between Eyzn and the rest of us. I was not a fool to recognize the telltale signs of the shielding. Even the power behind what my shotgun could offer would not be enough to penetrate the activated barrier, preventing me from shooting Eyzn right here and now, ending this for good.

Nerves wired hot, I still raised my gun as I approached, my finger edging closer and closer to the trigger with each passing second.

Eyzn, aware of the fact that we had arrived, turned to face us, his eyes tilted upward in mock surprise. He gave a singular cough as he slowly pried his hand away from his neck, a syringe lightly clutched between his fingers. The contents of the syringe had been emptied and Eyzn was now rubbing at his shoulder where his miters were located, having injected whatever that fluid was into himself. Carelessly, he tossed the syringe away, having done what he needed to do with it.

"Do you even _know_ how much trouble I went through just to get that geth prime on my side?" Eyzn scoffed, sounding unusually unconcerned, as all of us on both sides crept up to the barrier. "I had to cart that thing off Rannoch without any heavy tools… by _myself_ and then I had to spend the better part of a month trying to reprogram it! Just getting it to recognize me as a superior took nearly two weeks! Now… you had your own little minion undo all of that work in mere seconds. All that effort… gone. I suppose you're quite satisfied with yourself?"

Incredulous, I shook my head, annoyed with Eyzn's glib attitude. "Not even close, fucker. Sagan _died_ tearing apart your mindless slave. I'm nowhere close to satisfied just yet."

"Still so sentimental over a geth? Sam, Sam… a geth doesn't 'die' like you and I might. They only get destroyed, _deactivated_. Your pet doesn't deserve an iota of your sympathy."

"You have no idea how wrong you are!" Nya spat as she shot a finger at Eyzn. "You just don't have the capability to understand what a geth is truly made of!"

Eyzn rolled his eyes and began to slowly pace just like Sievra was doing in the background. "Ironic. It is _your_ lack of understanding that has placed you in your mindset in the first place. Your emotions for the geth aren't even comprising the bulk of how blind all of you have been. I probably shouldn't be too accusatory, though. Everyone has their own delusions that they willingly submit themselves over to. I have mine and you have yours. Pity, it appears you have not fully identified all your delusions just yet."

"I don't want to hear any more of this shit," I growled as I stepped to within a couple feet of the humming blue barrier becoming more and more angered with my revenge constantly being denied. "Drop this shield. Let us finally go at it. You can't run from me anymore, Eyzn."

The chuckle that wormed its way out of Eyzn's throat was rather unnerving, as was the mirthless shake of his head as he shook from his laughter. "On the contrary, Sam. You just _might_ be interested in what I have to say."

"No," I emphasized. "I really don't. Back… the fuck… down. You've _lost_."

"Have I? _Have I?_ You really _did_ learn nothing while you were in my captivity. Either that, or you weren't paying any attention at all. That's disappointing. I thought you would've figured it out by now."

"Sam," Nya asked, "what is he talking about?"

"I have no idea," I honestly replied, too perplexed to make heads or tails of this cryptic talk.

"Think," Eyzn urged as his hands made frantic gestures in the air as he swayed back and forth agonizingly. " _Think!_ For over _four months_ , Sam. For over four months I had you trapped and under my control! I had been plying you with hints all that time but… could it be… that you never once wondered why I never simply just… _killed_ you? That would have been the simplest option that I could have taken in that time span. It would have rid me of you for good! _Anyone_ would have taken such action before then! Or did you think I was just keeping you around so that I could torture you every once in a while for the fun of it?"

I had no answer for him and my jaw opened and closed without any words being uttered.

Undeterred, Eyzn continued. "I was not being stupid, Sam. I _knew_ the entire time that I was only losing the advantage of time the more I kept you around. It made the most sense to have you frankly killed off right away, yet I didn't do it. I could have done it on the Citadel, in Santa Cruz, _all that time in the Shed_ … but I never went that far. Did you ever realize… why? What motive could I _possibly_ have to keep an enemy like you alive?!"

"Maybe it was because you're a sadistic little asshole?" I offered, my fingers aching as they tightened upon the grips of the shotgun.

Eyzn lifted a finger in amusement, taunting me from beyond the barrier. "Sadistic, yes. An asshole, maybe. But the entire picture, _wrong_. You just… weren't… _listening_."

" _I had to listen to you plenty!_ " I screamed as I jammed the barrel of the shotgun against the barrier in anger, causing sparks to shoot out and faint electric fingers to make split-second arcs. "I lost _four months_ of my life because of you! I had to endure your fucking expressions and your diatribes each time you carved open my body! All while you were spewing your bullshit of me having wait for 'one more thing to show me.' It was always that one line: ' _one more thing to show me!_ ' ' _One more thing to show me!_ ' I got so fucking sick of it because you had _nothing_ this whole time! You were just using that as an excuse to try to mentally break me! You tried to make me crumple at your feet and yet you _still_ refuse to admit that you failed! You… _failed!_ Look around you for once and admit that you failed!"

Now Eyzn stilled, his feet finally planting themselves firmly on the ground. He folded his hands behind his back as he appraised my furious expression. One eye visibly raised from behind his visor, indicating a somewhat complacent bemusement. The quarian tapped a foot as he briefly glanced at the ground, considering his next words very carefully.

"It's quite cathartic, isn't it?" his soft voice oozed past the humming shield. "Voicing your grievances?"

"I can think of something that'll be even more cathartic," I grimaced as I kept the shotgun pointed at my foe's head.

"Point taken," the amusement had fled from Eyzn's tone, leaving him cold and serious, his eyes narrowing in a hardened gaze. "But maybe I will acknowledge the fact that my methods at… controlling you left a lot to be desired. I won't say that they weren't successful, but perhaps I had been relying on them for too long."

Then the quarian beckoned with a finger, the movement sly and creeping. "I probably have put this off for too long, as well. Come. I'll show you what I've been referring to this whole time."

With that, Eyzn then moved over to the pedestal, the lone object in Eyzn's vicinity. Carefully, tenderly, Eyzn moved to the back of it and placed his hands over the rounded top, which I noted was coated in a thick and translucent film. I thought I was going crazy, but it sounded like there were shuffling noises being emitted from the pedestal itself. I was still nonplussed at what the hell was going on that I hardly reacted, though.

Looking up to lock eye contact with me, Eyzn's eyes lidded upward in a hidden smile. "And furthermore…" he breathed, " _Carthage must be destroyed_." He then gave a chuckle to himself. "I was wondering if you would ever understand the significance of that quote, Sam."

Leaving little time for that to sink in, Eyzn suddenly ripped the cover off of the pedestal, revealing what was inside.

Nya, Iroa, and I leaned forward, our anxiety approaching critical levels.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect and… looking at what lay within that pedestal… I could not control my reaction of disbelief.

The first laugh bubbled out of me. Then another. And another… until finally a stream of derisive chortles could not stop themselves from being voiced as I shook my head in bewilderment. Everyone was looking at me like I had gone completely mad, and perhaps I finally had. It was just… looking at what Eyzn was showing to us now, all the disappointment and disdain could only be portrayed as a series of laughs from my throat. This… this was a mockery, wasn't it? Surely the biggest jest ever pulled in the history of the galaxy. What was Eyzn trying to pull with this obvious stunt to indicate his scorn towards me?

Because what lay comfortably within the pedestal was a cushioned crib shaped in a plush and transparent sphere. An environmental bubble. Inside that bubble… was a baby.

A quarian baby. Still too young to be outside its environmental bubble. It was sleeping soundly, its chest puffing up and down in its gentle slumber. No concern whatsoever for the brewing violence outside of its influence. I wondered how old it actually was as I took a step back from the barrier, still grinning like a lunatic.

"Just when I thought you couldn't get any more pathetic, you twit," I breathed hard in between panting peals of laughter, "you go and lower my expectations further. Hiding behind an infant, Eyzn? Using it as a shield? I didn't think you would stoop _that_ low." I then eyed the baby a bit more closely, noting its pudgy form and its frail limbs as it kicked in its sleep. "Whose is it, Eyzn? Oh, don't tell me it's _yours?_ Who in their right mind would _ever_ father a kid with you—"

" _No_ , Sam!" Nya whispered urgently as she sank her fingers into my arm, causing me to let out an involuntary gasp of pain. "That… that's not his child!"

Now my face froze, icicles immediately forming around my heart, seemingly stopping it in place. Confused, I looked down to see that Nya was holding onto me for dear life, her eyes open as wide as they could go, her chest quivering as she hyperventilated. Across from us, still hovering over the infant, Eyzn remained silent, his head tilted as he waited for us to make the determination all by ourselves.

The notion came to me before it was voiced and I thought to myself, _oh god… no_.

Then Nya's next words caused my entire universe to crack in half.

"It's… our _daughter_."

* * *

 _The human was no stranger to the spacious and altogether silent surroundings that comprised hospital waiting rooms. Yet it had seemed strange to the human as this time around, instead of being on the opposite side of the impenetrable doors, restricted to all but a select staff, he had been relegated to waiting in this room with everyone else, no longer in control of medical process. This place and what it entailed was not in his domain and thus he could not enter. Actually, he had no problem not being able to enter because he did not want to enter. To pass the time, he read a few various articles on his omni-tool and watched some mindless videos while trying to ignore the chatter coming from the nervous patients taking seats around him in the innocently colored room._

 _His wandering eyes soon became bored at the entertainment on the screen and he found his way back to the lettering printed on the wall, a reminder to indicate to the human exactly where he was located, not to mention denoting the reason why he was waiting in the first place._

 _Fertility Wing at Huerta, the sign read. The human had seen the advertisements before and a random jingle popped into his head. He returned to his videos to drown the annoying chime out._

 _Minutes later, the human looked up as the doors to the clinic parted and the person he had been expecting, a lithe quarian, slowly walked out towards him. He met her halfway. They did not speak right away – the human had no idea what to say and the quarian seemed to be a little… disconnected. Nervous. But what was there to be nervous about? The human quashed his desire to pry. Giving a warm smile instead, the human crept an arm around the back of the quarian's shoulders affectionately as he led her out, keeping her close to his body._

 _The human and the quarian spent the rest of the day at their apartment. They shared very few words together. The human, however, went out of his way more so than usual to make sure that the quarian was kept comfortable. He provided her with pillows and blankets for her to rest on, to take things easy, but was kindly rebuffed. The quarian instead reached out towards the human, wanting to silently bask in his presence, to keep his touch close at hand. They lay together upon the couch for long hours, barely moving, thousands of possibilities regarding their future all jolting through their minds – all unvoiced._

 _Even their dinner together was a silent affair. The two of them ate their food, which had taken the human a great deal of effort this time around as he wanted to give the quarian a special meal, but it was barely punctuated with words except for an occasional compliment towards the food itself. The awkward silence simmered amongst them and it worried the human, but he could not think of the right words to say to the quarian, uncertain if he had it within him to make her feel better._

 _The quarian, finished with her meal, politely excused herself and thanked the human for what he had done for her. Her speech was halting, her voice cracking, as if she was trying to keep her embarrassment concealed. The human merely watched and mournfully kept his eyes on the quarian as she began to move past him towards the bedroom._

 _But then he suddenly reached out and gently caught her wrist._

 _The quarian jolted, but did not yank her arm away from the human's light grip. The human similarly stood, sadly looked up and down at the quarian, his lips momentarily drooping in a mournful frown._

 _The human wanted the quarian to know that whatever faults she thought she had within herself, he did not care. To him, she held his entire life in her hands. She held more than that, actually. Her fingers clutched the universe, each delicate star and galaxy contained within her soft hands._

 _A day like this did not have to last forever._

 _The human pulled the quarian closer to him and he whispered his love for her where he imagined her ear to be within her helmet. She swayed, feeling light and dizzy. The human continued to repeat his adoration over and over and over again, telling her that she should not be ashamed for this decision. The clinic, all the preparations they had done, using a donor to fertilize the eggs, this was all their choice. By no fault of anyone had they come to make this choice. The human thought it unfair that the quarian should be punishing herself like this… simply for thinking that he was disappointed in this outcome._

 _Why share this pain, the human reasoned, when they should be sharing joy instead?_

 _The human led the quarian to the bedroom, all bundled together, as he began to softly kiss her suited neck. The quarian was shaking, but became more and more relaxed as the human pressed his lips against her. The notion that she had his complete and unwavering support was enough to melt the cold frost that had coated her nerves, crackling it away for it to be incinerated in the fires of her heart._

 _Once the two of them reached the bedroom, they immediately began their ritual of undressing. The human, characteristically, finished first and soon helped the quarian become free of her suit. In time, the two of them stood before one another, unclothed, but poised, their inherent differences nakedly apparent as their profiles were exacerbated in the low light. The quarian, struck by a bolt of shyness, moved her hands to cover herself at first, but clarity soon fell upon her once she realized who she was standing in front of, and she slowly peeled her hands away, letting the human see all of her._

 _The human walked up to the quarian, as tender as before, and took her in a hug, their lips pressing against each other's in a passionate kiss. They remained standing in this position, completely comfortable, as their hands began to wander, touching the skin of their partner. Form, circumstances, all had no bearing on the love that the human and the quarian felt for the other. This inclination, this need for closeness, despite their obvious differences, was as natural as breathing, making complete sense in their minds._

 _Who were they to deny such a powerful attraction?_

 _Eager to please the quarian, the human broke away from the quarian's soft lips as he applied his own to her bare neck. He then made a trail down the valley between her breasts, and made a short detour at her belly. The human kissed the quarian's stomach, light pecks around her navel, making the quarian quiver in laughter. But the human was experiencing exhilaration and fright at the same time as he continued to kiss the quarian's belly – he knew of the life that would soon be burgeoning in the quarian's womb, he knew of the huge direction his life was going to change. But he was approaching the unknown with open arms, a foolish sort of euphoria determined purely by emotion rather than logic._

 _Because this was the gift that he had been looking for his entire life._

 _With tears in his eyes, touched from the quarian's love, the human continued to move further down the quarian's body, past the black tuft of pubic hair, and finally to the space between her legs. He opened his mouth and raised himself up a little bit, his lips and tongue finding pleasure and granting it unto the quarian as he closed his eyes to lose himself in the sounds and taste of her love._

 _The quarian, her hands holding onto the head of the human, gave out a groan and bit her bottom lip. Her knees buckled as she stood, and the quarian trembled as her body began to radiate with joy. She had to bend her legs slightly so that she would not fall over, already too consumed with lust to be able to make sense of things, and she began to loudly pant._

 _Very quickly, the quarian announced that she had to lie down otherwise she would collapse from the human's attention. Awkwardly, the two shuffled over to the bed so that the quarian could flop down upon it. The human continued his loving work, cradling the quarian's lower torso with such care that the quarian recognized immediately the human's parental potential. Soon, she was squirming on the bed, head spinning, toes curling, mouth forming nonsense words, as she realized what the human had been trying to indicate to her the entire day. It all made sense to her now – his care, his affections, the minute details as they mated. The quarian made an open smile, her arms wide, from knowing and confirming the human's deepest desire… the same desire that resonated within her._

 _That craving need to start a family._

 _The scream she made soon after encompassed more than a simple joy._

 _In due time, the human and the quarian resumed their activities, both of them now atop the bed, holding each other close as they made love. Their breaths matched the other's frequency, their fingers tightly clutched the other's body, both of whom were coated in a slick film of slippery sweat. Together they moved in a soaked heap, both gasping deeply for air, both trembling as they became addled with love. As the night came to a close, as the human continued to gently push himself against the quarian, the quarian became almost incoherent, whispering at a frantic pace that she was close… so close. The quarian began to utter, almost a plead, that she was going to come. Over and over. The human, energized by the quarian's passion, deeply kissed her in the middle of her frenzied pants._

 _Seconds later, the quarian's mouth opened in a silent howl, the human's teeth nibbling at her neck._

 _After the blissful minute had finally faded, the quarian, nearly crying, heard the human tell her out of the blue that she would be a wonderful mother to their child. She smiled and affirmed that their child could also not ask for a better father._

* * *

"That's not _possible_ ," I croaked out as I withered in the presence of the child, my voice meek. "No. No… I don't believe it."

 _It can't be true. This is a bad dream. I did not hear this. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true…_

"It's true!" Nya gasped as she urgently pointed at the sleeping infant, the baby's peaceful face so innocent and full of wonder as she yawned. "That… that's _her!_ That is our daughter, Sam!"

"No… no, no, no," I mumbled in a daze as I approached the hissing barrier, struggling to pierce the sizzling shield as I looked upon the child. "No. This… this makes no sense. I don't understand. That _can't_ be her. Our daughter's dead, Nya. She's _dead_. She died a long time ago."

"But that _is_ her!" Nya nearly shrieked as she nearly yanked my arm out of my socket. " _Look_ at her! I would recognize her from anyone else! That is our _daughter!_ She's right there!"

Nya was correct in her observation that the child sitting before our eyes certainly looked like the daughter that she had borne from her body. It was the tiny details that gave it away: the slightly cleft chin, the shape of her nose, her adorable eyes. There was too much of her mother in this infant for it to be a coincidence through and through.

But still, it was impossible. I could not wrap my head around the evidence that lay before me. Our daughter had died almost a year prior. Nya and I had endured that terrible moment together and the infant had been cremated. Her remains had been interred at a mausoleum on the Citadel… so if that was what we perceived to be our version of the truth, then how the hell was our daughter supposedly sitting right across this barrier from us?

I just couldn't put it together.

Panic gripping at the edges of my brain, I slowly looked up at Eyzn, my fingers relentlessly twitching in anticipation.

"What did you _do?_ " I asked through a dry throat before I pointed at the sleeping child. "Who _is_ that?!"

A low cackle escaped Eyzn's vocabulator. "You don't need me to confirm what you already know, Sam. Your wife figured it out immediately. This _is_ your daughter."

"You… fucking… _LIAR!_ " I bellowed as I smashed a fist into the shield, creating a loud crackle and sending an electric ripple through the transparent wall. My hand began to throb but the raging torrent in my head took that pain and crumpled it away like it was nothing.

The infant stirred, becoming upset. Eyzn waggled a finger at me. "Careful, Sam. Wouldn't want to wake the baby now, would we?"

"How can that be my daughter?! My daughter's _dead!_ We only had her for a week before she passed away! What the fuck _is_ this?!"

"Ah, that would be true," Eyzn simpered, "if you ever _had_ your daughter in the first place, that is."

Somewhere, deep inside me, the invisible knife returned to hover above my heart with a vengeance. I swore I could feel something digging around inside my guts, churning my stomach, looking for where I kept my deepest fears and to gleefully dig them up.

"I don't understand," I could only say.

Gleefully, Eyzn clapped his hands together as he moved away from the child. "No, it appears you never did. I'm actually surprised you never figured out. All the evidence was right in front of your face. I guess that all this time, you probably thought that I was being deliberately obtuse, just meandering my way through my petty torments. Seems that you never realized that I was speaking the truth when I had mentioned that I had been planning this entire thing for months… only my plan had started months _before_ I ran into you once again on the Citadel. You never determined the distinction. I'm disappointed in your deductive skills, but at the same time I'm glad. I'm glad because now I get to rub in your face just how badly you failed!"

Eyzn's hands were now gesticulating wildly as he moved around the cavernous room, Sievra following close behind. "I'm curious, did you not find it rather odd that your supposed daughter died under mysterious circumstances? What was it – heart failure derived from a—?"

"—A genetic disorder," Nya finished for him, her whisper tumbling out of her mouth as she could not help but take longing glances at the sleeping baby, already feeling the ache of motherhood tug at her heart.

Eyzn snapped his fingers. "A genetic disorder! Yes! That could be the only reason why a child's heart would just stop all by itself! A disorder, mind you, that had apparently never been picked up on any of the prenatal scans you underwent, Nya. A careless oversight, it seems. Or… could it have been a symptom of a much larger reason?"

"How did you know that my child had no deformities?" Nya asked, one of her hands instinctively covering her stomach.

"I read the reports," Eyzn shrugged. "Hospital records are so easy to access, especially if you have the funds to pay off someone to do all the hacking for you. And you had _many_ records, Nya. One checkup at the hospital every month, as I recall. Nothing could have gone amiss as you deliberately made sure that your daughter was growing up healthy in your body. And there were samples taken from you too – lots and lots of samples. Particularly blood. The doctors had so many vials of your blood. Who would be so concerned if a few tubes of blood went missing? Clerical errors happen all the time, not to mention that blood banks have virtually no security compared to most of the more valuable fluids stored in a hospital. That same laxness in security extends to the maternity wing, didn't you know? Someone could simply… walk right in and… _take_ something without anyone being any wiser. But the perfect crime leaves no trace. No… it's not enough to simply _take_. The absence of an object is the clearest indication that a crime has been committed. Making sure that absence is _filled_ , though, is the difficult part but if pulled off, everyone is none the wiser. No one suspects a thing. No one has any reason to care that a transgression has been done unto them. People naturally want to keep up appearances. Why bother questioning a reality that looks to have no faults?"

Rain was lashing against the picture windows now and lightning was spiraling out of control in the background, illuminating Eyzn's sinister outline, who continued his rant, to our growing horror.

"You two eventually determined that a genetic disorder had been the cause of your loss. That's it right there: you kept up appearances. You did not question what you perceived to be reality in the face of a plausible answer! You had the evidence in front of your face that a genetic disorder should not have been the cause of your daughter's death, but you accepted it all the same. Then again, you could never have known the true cause unless you had been deliberately looking for it. How could you tell that such a disorder had been in your daughter all this time… or if it had been _designed_ to appear like a disorder?"

The bottom of my stomach finally dropped out from me. The handle of my shotgun nearly slipped from my slackened fingers. Every organ in my body seemed to be shriveling up, turning my extremities numb. It hurt to breathe. My eyeballs felt itchy and my sight turned various shades of red.

"You fucking _animal_ ," I seethed, nearly humbled by the power of Eyzn's hate. "You really _are_ a monster."

Nya turned to me, still not comprehending. "Sam? What… what is he talking about?"

"Our daughter… Nya… it's…" I had to wipe my brow for I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was now dripping sweat. "What Eyzn's saying is that… all this time… our daughter never made it to our home from the hospital. We took something else back with us."

"So who _did_ we have?"

I was almost ashamed that I had been so stupid, knowing what I was about to say out loud, that all the pain and hurt in the wake of our tragedy had all been meaningless, completely useless violence on our parts. All careless violence lashed out at the people I loved, further evidence of my failure.

My failure to love my family.

"We had… a _clone_."

"Not just _any_ clone," Eyzn crowed, pleased that he was finally getting through as my wife nearly collapsed in shock next to me, "a _flash_ clone. A clone with a deliberately shortened incubation period. A viable fetus, grown in less than half the time than a regular clone, but with the drawback that—"

"—Flash cloned tissue degenerates rapidly," I murmured. "The enzymes and proteins… they break down because of the shortened incubation period. There wasn't… there wasn't any time for the nucleic acid bonds to completely form because they needed time to incubate properly. And because of the abbreviated incubation period…" I started to become choked up, my throat throbbing with sobs, "…the clone died in a matter of _days_."

"Not a genetic disorder?" Nya spoke, her own fists clenching in on themselves. "Her heart… the clone's heart… it failed because it just decayed? That the cells within it just died?"

Eyzn was loving ramping up the suspense, his own hands twiddling in pleasure. "Apparently. You can never tell with flash clones which system is going to fail first. Heart, lungs, brain, it's all a roll of the dice. But the end result is virtually indistinguishable from a symptom of a genetic disorder. Plus, like I had mentioned before, it was a much more plausible outcome to you." Now Eyzn nearly doubled over as he looked at our shocked faces before calming himself and rubbing at the top of his helmet. "It was _your_ clone, Nya. With Sievra's help here, we created the clone using your DNA. Thanks to you going into the hospital every month for your checkups, we had a clear roadmap as to when we could begin the flash cloning process so that we could time the swap up perfectly. If we had grown the clone too soon, we could simply keep it in its incubation tank until it was time for it to come out. That would've been a better outcome for me – if I had started the cloning process too soon and had let the clone incubate for only a day, then it would've only had a matter of hours before it decayed once it was removed from its tank."

"But… my baby…" Nya was stumbling over her own words as she kept on taking incredulous glances towards the child that had come from her body. "When did you switch her? I was with my child the whole time except for…" Nya gave a start. "Except for when I had to let her rest in the maternity ward."

"The maternity ward. While you were resting after the birth of your daughter, the baby was being housed in a sterile unit within that very ward – the very same process that every mother endures during the postnatal period. And if _someone_ was disguised as a doctor, like Sievra," Eyzn gestured to the asari, "that person could accomplish a quick swap of the children in the lightly secured maternity ward without anyone noticing. Mostly the security is there to prevent any kidnapping of infants, not for performing a switch. Plus, there is the added benefit that children that are just born look very similar to each other, so it helped with the lie in our case. Sievra took your daughter away while you took the clone, unaware that your time together was going to be rather… _short-lived_. Heh… heh…"

"Keelah," Nya moaned as she placed a hand upon my shoulder.

I knew what Nya was communicating through just her touch alone. That crippling anger that we had directed at one another over the past year, that blinding myopia that had strangled us in the wake of what we had thought to be our daughter's death, had no more purpose anymore. The child, the clone, had always been doomed, damned to an early death. Fault could not be applied to any of us, even though we had done nothing to exacerbate the situation.

The hatred that Nya had demonstrated towards me – her savage violence and screaming blame – all machinations from this one man: Eyzn. _He_ had torn apart our family. _He_ had stolen what was rightfully ours. I had almost come to _despise_ the mother of my own child, because of this man. I could never forgive myself for hurting Nya, for falling prey to the trap that Eyzn had so carefully designed for the both of us. Eyzn had tried to cut off our love for the other, nearly severed the bindings that brought us together, all for a mere grudge.

For that, Eyzn had to die… and I would not feel any regret at turning him into a corpse.

* * *

I felt pain and I just now noticed the blood squirting between my fingers, leaving droplets on the floor. My nails had been biting into the skin there so tightly that it had broken in four nail-sized marks.

Snapping out of my brief reverie with a fresh breath, I focused my anger upon a singular point: Eyzn. The time for words was long past. Only violence would wipe this bastard's stain from the galaxy and I would be the one to do it. It would be a mercy unto all of life itself for me to wipe Eyzn's existence away. I had to do it, for Nya.

For my daughter.

Eyzn turned away from our group, momentarily disgusted with having to humor us and to spoil his elaborate planning. Someone brushed by me and Iroa stepped forward, having withstood the weight of the revelations silently, bearing his own horror in stoic fashion.

"You would stoop to take my daughter's child, my _granddaughter_ , just to satisfy your own animosity?" the elder quarian called out towards his repugnant stepson. "You let the absence of their daughter fester between her and her husband, to poison their thoughts against one another?"

Eyzn stopped in front of the window, observing the sheets of rain drenching the city below, lightning seeming to spear right through him. "That was the entire point, Iroa," we barely heard him mutter. "And it worked even better than I had hoped. For a time. Then, predictably, they overcame their own hatred for the other when it should have destroyed them. My plan needed an enemy for them to focus on and I had hoped that they would direct their anger upon themselves for a little while longer. But they proved to be more resilient and have combined their hatred onto another enemy. I am now that enemy, the embodiment of all they despise. My crafted lie should have destroyed them and in some small way, I succeeded. For a time, Iroa… I had everything I had hoped for. I had _won_."

"It's not about winning or losing!" Iroa barked. "You pushed them into this when you kidnapped their daughter and tortured the both of them! They were _wronged_ by you!"

" _They_ were wronged by _me?!_ " Eyzn whipped around, one eye noticeably twitching in response. "I was the one who was wronged _first!_ I have no regrets doing what I did to them because I've carried out my revenge. I've _honored_ what I had promised to do. As for you, I don't know how I would be able to live myself compared to what _you've_ done to yourself, Iroa. You've cozied up to Sam and Nya because that's in your best interest, you traitor. Or have you forgotten what they did? _They killed my mother!_ "

"Kraana was a sick woman!" Iroa shouted. "She died because she could not bear the thought of having to share you or me with anyone else, even if they were my own family! She tried to kill everyone that got in her way and she paid for her short-sightedness. I cannot justify those kinds of actions, Eyzn. I had hoped that you would have at least understood that."

"What did you expect?! For me to just accept the fact that my mother died and no one would face retribution for it?! Or did you expect me to completely fold like you, to embrace your wife's killers with open arms? No, Iroa. I will not sully myself as you have done. I'm simply repaying the favor your 'family' has done unto me. An eye for an eye, isn't that the correct saying, Sam?"

"Go fuck yourself," I spat, the scar at my neck beginning to ache as my skin recalled the metal bite of the knife and the subtle hiss from when my flesh had been parted effortlessly.

"I was _wrong_ , Eyzn," Iroa pleaded. "I was wrong for my part in aligning myself against Sam and Nya in the beginning. Just please, stop this madness. Lower the shield, give them their child back. You don't have to be angry anymore."

Eyzn shook his head slowly, almost as if he were in denial. "You miserable old man," he now cried. "You spit on Kraana's memory. I looked up to you, Iroa. I _loved_ you!"

"Eyzn… I am sorry that I was not the father that you wanted. I made too many mistakes in my life for me to pay for them all. But it's not too late for you. Kraana died because her mistake killed her. Don't let your own mistakes take you too."

"Iroa…" Eyzn wept as his hands grasped at empty air, strangling the life out of it, "I will _never_ be able to find forgiveness inside me. You are welcome to look. Look, I beg you! Look inside me. Look into the cells that comprise me, down to the proteins, to the atoms, to the nucleons, right down to the quarks. You will find no capability for forgiveness there. It was almost like I was created with a missing piece, like my ability to forgive was never given to me. There's nothing there but hate… jealousy… and spite. I don't care if mistakes were made in the past, Iroa. No amount of reasoning will ever hide the truth that my mother is dead and I cannot reverse that outcome. All I can do is avenge her, which will satisfy the hate in me for good."

Iroa took a step back, momentarily astounded. He began to lift a hand only to drop it back down to his side. The man then sadly gave a sideways glance right at me, enabling me to see something in his eyes. Something… melancholy. Traces of a broken heart. A mournful regret of a lifetime's worth of wrongs.

And… incredibly… a glimmer of pride.

Looking back to Eyzn, Iroa ruffled his shoulders and cleared his throat before he squinted lowly. "If Kraana were still alive," he said, "even _she_ would be disappointed in you."

Now only the muted tapping of rain against the glass was apparent as the thick silence enveloped us all. Eyzn stood very still, statuesque, as his chest slowly rose up and down in labored breaths. Nya clung to my wrist and I trembled in my shoes while watching Iroa defiantly stand up to his stepson, no hesitation lingering in his posture.

Another bolt of lightning split the night, the resulting thunder causing the construction catwalks to shudder.

Eyzn microscopically shook his head, his eyes wide and pleading. "It doesn't matter," he uttered as he fumbled for something on his belt. "Because she was always disappointed in you from the very beginning!"

Hidden by the darkness, only apparent from the raging hell outside, the outline of the gun rose from the black soup and pushed its way forward as a hidden command caused the thin, blue barrier between us to instantaneously drop with a crackling _snap_. At the microsecond the shield wall was in existence to the microsecond it was not, the pistol found its way through the murk, unnoticed by all of us until it was too late, clutched in Eyzn's hand.

The trigger made a scraping noise as it was pulled back.

Thunder drowned out the blast but the blissfully peeling flame that echoed from the chamber lingered like a gentle puff of wind, the inferno curling from the cylindrical prison.

Nya and I roared at the same time.

The baby, curled in her environmental bubble, woke from the noise and began to cry.

And Iroa made a soft gasp and began to fall, his hands clutching at a darkening stain upon his chest. He crumpled to the ground before any of us could move, his throbbing eyes mournfully observing the churning dark clouds through the skylight, inanely thinking of how wonderful it was for him to see a rainstorm of such power rage above him.

Automatically and in reaction to seeing my stepfather go down, the shotgun in my hands found itself lifted up and directed right at Eyzn just across from me. My lungs had no air to nourish them as I finally pulled the trigger, almost in disbelief that this chance had presented itself to me.

The shotgun pummeled the air with its punishing blast, but the impact did not down Eyzn. A thick blue shield that encompassed his person was revealed as the buckshot slammed into it, an impenetrable barrier that refused to allow harm to come to the man. However, the shot had been directed partially onto Eyzn's arm, so even though the man had not even been hit, the force behind the shot was so great that it took the pistol right out of Eyzn's hand, sending it skidding along the polished floor and out of sight.

Eyzn bellowed in pain and instinctively clutched at his wrist, his eyes meeting mine and recognizing that his fate had come calling. Again I fired, but Eyzn ducked the blast and the buckshot instead smashed through the window beyond, blowing it out and allowing the wind and rain to splatter inside, turning the ground slippery.

Panicked, Eyzn took off running towards the half-finished stairs, intent on heading for the catwalks outside. Shouting incoherently, I fired burst after burst in his direction, chewing up wood paneling and shearing off metal structures while Eyzn fled into the bare skeleton of the yet-to-be-completed penthouse. It was all shoddy walkways, flimsy tarps, and uncovered passages up there, all exposed to the elements.

But I'll be damned if I did not get my hands on him this time, I vowed as I took off in pursuit, taking the stairs three at a time.

* * *

Before Nya's eyes, she witnessed her future morph.

Her daughter was _alive_. She was alive! But a prisoner, a captive. Held at the whim of her insane half-brother.

But now her father was lying upon the ground, very still, and her husband had rushed up the stairs to chase Eyzn down, leaving just her and Sievra standing in the room, with her child in between.

Her stomach ached and her mind simmered in a fury. She crept closer to her daughter, already consumed by the natural desire to protect her, to shield her. Nya found this hidden corner of joy that had been buried within her, unseen, for way too long. She nearly cried in joy, for now she knew that she had never stopped being a mother.

"Alone at last," she heard the asari sneer as the blue-scaled alien crossed her silver swords in front of her, a mocking salute. Sievra twirled the long blades in her hands through confident fingers, as a deceptive grin showed teeth. "Just how it was always meant to be, eh?"

Nya frowned as she simply stared at the person whom she had nearly considered to be a friend, an ally. The betrayal had not run as deeply as intended, but the invisible wound still stung all the same.

"You bitch," Nya growled as she raised her rifle and unleashed a three-round burst.

Sievra simply cackled as a wreath of biotic energy encased her form and she suddenly shot to the left in a dark energy assisted charge, leaving behind purple streaks as Nya's eyes tried to perceive the near-teleportation of the asari. With her swords angled behind her, Sievra mockingly bumped her eyebrows as she charged from one corner of the room to the next, easily evading Nya's bullets, no matter how hard she tried to hit the asari. Nya was rotating in a panic, but keeping herself from wildly firing into the room, unnerved from Sievra's rapid changes in orientation around her.

Suddenly, no longer evading, Sievra angled herself straight on towards Nya, her swords raised high to conduct a killing blow, the blades sharp enough to slice through steel. Cutting through Nya's enviro-suit would be like carving through butter – even a light blow would be enough to doom her. Letting out a fearsome scream, Sievra jumped high in the air, azure flames licking at her body, both swords swooshing down to cleave Nya in two.

At the last moment, Nya's eyes grew wide and she raised her rifle to block the blow, angled sideways. The resulting clang nearly shook her arms out of her sockets, almost forcing her to take a knee. One of the swords had been deflected as it had ricocheted off of the titanium barrel, while the other sword had been angled a bit better, shearing through plastisteel and polymer, but it became lodged in the thicker metal that made up the slide, too dense even for a specialized sword to slice through.

Sievra's face grew twisted as she tried to wrench her sword out from Nya's ruined rifle, but the quarian held onto her destroyed weapon, her muscles straining as she began to pull the her cracked gun towards her. The asari shouted as she hopelessly tugged on her lodged blade, forgetting that her other hand gripped another sword, but she was so determined to win this tug-of-war, despite the fact that Nya was stronger and fueled by a greater anger than her own.

The asari's grip failed when Nya gave a gigantic pull, wrenching the sword out of her grip.

Clenched in a fearless grip, Nya was seething as she switched to the sword she now possessed, still stuck in the inner workings of her rifle. However, Nya gave a sharp swing downward, smashing the rifle against the floor, cracking it into a hundred pieces, and freeing the sword from where it had been trapped.

The blade glittered in the air as Nya now hefted it in a two-handed grip, pointing it at Sievra as the two combatants now began to stalk each other in a circle. Sievra kept using a one-handed grip with the lone sword she now carried, a look of bemusement on her face.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" Sievra cackled as she gestured with her own weapon for good measure.

Nya just tightened her fingers upon the hilt. "Come over here and find out."

The asari frowned at Nya's self-assured nature. Truthfully, she had no idea whether the quarians devoted such attention to these elegant forms of combat as much as the asari did. Sievra was no fool, though, so she decided to test Nya's abilities a bit. Whirling and reaching out a hand, a chair from the far side of the room began to levitate, brimming with dark energy, and Sievra swiped her hand towards Nya, the chair following the asari's movement.

Nya saw the chair hurtling in her direction and she immediately adopted a stance towards the onrushing object rather than trying to evade. She angled the sword completely vertical and the airborne chair was cleft in half as it hit the blade, both ends of the seat flying harmlessly past Nya on either side to clatter upon the tile floor noisily.

Nya turned, a cocky smile hidden by her visor, as she twirled her own sword just once, making a mockery of the taunt that Sievra had used against her in the beginning.

Now Sievra just laughed and spread her arms wide, a move that Nya found particularly curious. "Not bad, but that's just beginner stuff. You're only setting yourself up for failure, dear. I've been training on these things before you were even _born_ , and I've been training for at least fifty years. I can even handle a _matron_ with a sword like this. What hope could you possibly have against me?"

"Only fifty years?" Nya smirked as she lowered her stance. "It takes most species less than _half_ that time to become a master at this. I guess it really is true what they say about the asari. They're particularly slow learners."

On any other occasion, Nya would have laughed out loud at how Sievra's face quickly turned several shades of deep purple from being otherwise insulted so profoundly, but instead she gritted her teeth and willed herself to weather the upcoming assault as the asari, as expected, let out a horrid screech as she jumped to engage Nya, lightning reflecting off the tip of her outstretched sword.

Their blades came together with a sharp _clang_ , the razor-sharp edges grinding away sparks as micro-fibers of folded steel chipped away from the sheer force of the duelists. Nya's arms quaked but she held firm, roaring in the wake of the attack, already moving her arms for the next parry.

Sievra's sword was slicing through the air in a devilish series of cuts, each one intended to split Nya open from her chest down to her abdomen, spilling her guts. The asari was so engrossed in the technique of her attack that she almost failed to notice that Nya was determinedly blocking _every single blow_. Sievra nearly frowned as she darted to and fro, trying to expose a weak point in Nya's defense, but the quarian was impervious, handedly meeting the ferocious swings of Sievra's sword, her own blade not a millimeter out of position as more and more sparks flew, whirling around the savage dance.

Nya's mind was ablaze with activity as she made a tiny jump just out of reach to avoid a low swing from Sievra, intended to slash at her legs. The asari, even though she was trying hard not to show it, had to be astounded that Nya was holding her own for so long. Nya could be allotted a smile or two, knowing that despite all the time she and Sievra had spent together, Sievra had never really had the chance to truly know her.

Only one person in this universe had ever had that privilege.

The asari then made a quick lunge forward to try and run Nya through, but the quarian sidestepped the attack and merely pushed aside the offending blade. Now the two were locked together, each grunting as their swords pressed on the other, threatening to suddenly shoot away in a sudden jolt to draw blood.

Sievra pursed her lips, about to utter another taunt, but before a single syllable could pass from her lips, Nya unexpectedly threw out an elbow, clocking the asari perfectly upon her nose, breaking it, and causing Sievra to let out a squeal. Sievra disengaged from the locked position and brought a hand up to try to stem the thick flow of blood that was dribbling from her ruined nose. It was useless as her mouth and chin were quickly stained with gore and her attempts to quell it only made the palm of her hand very slick.

Now Nya pressed forward, eyes narrowed, and she quickly scythed her weapon towards Sievra's face. The panicked asari barely blocked the blow, her blood dripping everywhere and leaving a darkened path upon the floor. Sievra's wrist buckled from when she had to parry Nya's first swing and soon she barely kept herself on the defensive as Nya aimed blow after blow, the quarian's visor hiding her infuriated snarls that punctuated each and every attack.

Nya hardly fluctuated in the rhythm she set for herself. Her swings gradually became wilder and more intense, but she did not dare let up to give Sievra the chance to recover. The asari was visibly astounded, her broken nose acting as a distraction, and her own technique was faltering in the wake of Nya's rage. Nya did not celebrate just yet – her breathing came in a cold and even tempo as she brutally battered her foe, meaning to wear Sievra down one blow at a time.

The swords continued to clash upon the other as the combatants shot across the room, locked into this deadly ritual. Sievra was now bubbling with nervousness while Nya was sinking into the chilling sensation of her methodical dissection.

 _She kidnapped your daughter_ , was the only thing repeating through Nya's head that gave her the focus and drive to match Sievra's so-called skill. _She kidnapped your daughter. She kidnapped your daughter._

Nya was concentrating so hard on this fact that she almost missed the telltale signs of biotic energy glowing from Sievra's fist, and the crashing sound that emitted soon after.

Whirling around, Nya was barely able to bring her sword up to slice another thrown object, a desk, in two, pulled from Sievra's command. The move made Nya disoriented and that in turn led to an inherent panic. Aware that her concentration had broken away from her enemy, Nya quickly made to turn back to face the asari, only to find that she was _right there_.

With a one-handed maneuver, Sievra yelled in victory as she shoved Nya's sword to the side before she forced their blades down to the ground. Nya's wrist could not handle being twisted at such an angle and she was forced to drop the sword, relegated to helplessly watch as the discarded weapon sailed through the air, well out of reach, her only measure of attack and defense… _gone_.

Now Sievra had the point of her sword pointed directly at the middle of Nya's chest, but strangely, she did not strike the defenseless quarian. The asari was giggling madly, her entire face a mess as the blood from her broken nose continued to drip down her chin, staining her armor, and making her look quite a fright. Sievra poked with her sword, forcing Nya back a step, the quarian shrinking in fear under the stare of the energetic asari.

"Oh, I'm going to have fun with _you_ ," Sievra laughed, which sounded wet and congested from the blood flooding her mouth.

Nya quickly looked back and forth for a weapon she could grab, her heart sinking when she realized that she was all alone in this empty expanse. What was going to happen to her when Sievra was done? What would Sam do?

What would become of her daughter?

"Embrace eternity!" Sievra roared as a transparent and azure pulse rippled from the asari's forehead. Sievra's pupils filled the white of her eyes and in seconds… so did Nya's.

Nya gasped in surprise… _and life took on a whole new meaning as she was suddenly transported among the stars, to reside within the black space between the cosmos, the new dimension that had unfolded to accept her consciousness._

 _Streams of precious elements in liquid form floated by Nya's head as she opened her eyes within the mind meld, floating within her own private sphere of existence. Her body felt compacted by an invisible pressure and a nearby black hole skirted around her form._

 _The very essence of her soul felt like it was peeling apart in layers, her mind being violated, and the very idea that composed "Nya" seemed like it was being ground to dust, to be dispersed amongst the nebula of storms that enveloped her. A vortex of clouds sucked at her body, threating to tear her to pieces, Nya tried to run in the weightless environment, but her feet could not find purchase on anything. All her limbs were slow to react, almost as if she was submerged in water. It actually felt hard to breathe and Nya was soon gasping for air, her lungs straining upon her ribcage while her hands moved to feel her head._

 _Only, there was no helmet in the way for Nya to touch. Involuntarily, she gave a start. She was helmet-less in this place, unmasked. Panicked, she inhaled, not knowing if she had just relegated herself to a slow death from an allergic reaction. But the coughing did not encroach upon her, despite her still finding difficulty breathing from the intense gravitational forces._

 _What was this place?_

 _She tried to speak, but the words were torn from her lips. Nya could not even muster a croak, mute, unable to cry for help. She tried again, calling upon Sam, trying to scream to her husband, to no avail._

 _Silence beckoned instead._

 _Refusing to give into despair, Nya tried to turn in this disorienting place, her body sluggish and moving in a lethargic manner. It really did feel like she was trapped in liquid, because Nya could not recall feeling such a way anywhere else. She peered through the murkiness, trying to pierce the solid black layers that threatened to shut her out, to tear her limb from limb. Walls upon walls of imperceptible barriers closed her off – radiation from a million neutron stars, each as big as a golf ball, pushed her back, bombarding her with their deadly emissions._

 _Nya waved a limb and stared in shock as a lone bubble trickled upward. A bubble. That meant air. Air trapped within a separate medium. So she was in a liquid of some kind. An ocean? But how could she still breathe? The hows and whys could not be determined because Nya soon realized that her world was starting to feel a little constrained._

 _No… it was no trickery. This was no ocean… but a bubble of her own. And it was enclosing upon her as made apparent by her warped reflection that slowly floated her way._

 _A silent scream attempted to force its way through Nya's throat, but still nothing came out. She arched her back as the crushing pressure became too great, her skull feeling like it was collapsing in on itself, cracking the bone and pulverizing her precious brain. Her limbs felt like they were going to give out, her ribcage about to implode._

 _But then a thought, drawn from nowhere, flitted through Nya's head._

 _What's your biggest regret, Nya?_

 _Regret? Nya wondered, the crippling pain momentarily forgotten. What would she have to regret now? Was it a sin that had long been forgotten? No, she had been granted forgiveness for her actions. There was no one she could name that she had any cause to reserve regret for. No name could come to mind._

 _Name… name…_

 _What was it about a name? A series of syllables that represented an entire person. A name meant everything and yet nothing to everyone. It was something that could never truly be erased… never truly taken away._

 _But a name had to be given for it to have meaning._

 _The name… why was it driving her so mad?_

 _What was that in her head? Ah, Qirra. Her mother's name. Such a beautiful name, Nya thought. So simple yet elegant, but it held meaning for a person she truthfully had barely known. Names had to be poignant, but etched in stone, having permanence._

 _Qirra. Why was Qirra still in her head? There were many more lovely names to choose from. Riena. Seni. Hane. All beautiful to Nya, yet meaningless._

 _Meaning had to be derived from the heart, the soul._

 _Qirra. Naeli. Shaehe._

 _Nothing was clicking for Nya._

 _Jaala. Remi. Huna. Seefu. Taylor._

 _Taylor._

 _TAYLOR!_

 _Nya's heart burst to life and she found the stray point of a sword hovering overhead, just past the thick layer of the bubble. Full of wonder, no longer feeling any pressure upon her body, Nya reached out with a finger and easily pressed through the taut outer edge of the globule, piercing it and sending a gush of the liquid rushing out._

 _Then the tip of her finger found the point of the sword._

 _A spark of static connected the two._

Nya screamed as the shockwave burst from her body, ripping her from the mind meld, and placing her back into the discernable universe. A swell of biotic power slammed in a ripple throughout the penthouse, picking up Sievra and throwing her several meters across the ground. All of the windows on the floor shattered from the sheer force of the biotic detonation, blowing them all out at the same time a bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky and struck the very earth. Nya's pupils returned to their normal size, but her eyes were still wide open as Nya gently floated back down to the ground, the tips of her boots gracefully touching the floor.

As Sievra began to pick herself up, Nya began to stalk her way over to the asari, her entire body brimming with remnant biotic energy – the lingering presence of the mind meld. Not even looking, Nya held out a glowing arm to her side and the sword that she had lost immediately sprung from where it had fallen, spinning through the air to land perfectly into Nya's palm, called to its new master.

Sievra gaped, having witnessed this miracle. The biotic energy finally withdrew from Nya, the temporary reserves of dark matter that had been transplanted into her cells now exhausted, the last traces of Sievra fully wiped from Nya's mind. Nya's biotic abilities had left her for good, never to be used again, the last weapon that Nya had stolen from Sievra. That final and blissfully cruel poison.

"It… isn't _possible_ ," Sievra cried as she stumbled to her feet, bending an arm back to slice at Nya once more with her sword.

But Nya was faster.

There was a whistling _thunk_ and Sievra's face tightened as she felt a part of her body become severed. Nya's blow had been too fast for her to even perceive. Trembling, Sievra looked down and stared at her maimed right arm, her hand now missing right at the wrist, Nya's sword having cut cleanly through flesh and bone. Not even the skin had been roughly torn ragged. Sievra's hand now lay below the asari, her sword still clutched in a firm palm. Blood was starting to ooze from the detached limb, as was the stump of her arm.

Sievra sunk to her knees and clutched at her wounded arm to cut off the flow of blood there. The pain was easily ignored – she had progressed into shock too quickly for her to be pained badly.

Now standing over her, her milky eyes simmering dispassionately, was Nya. The quarian squeezed the grip on her sword, finding no pleasure to be derived in watching this pathetic woman squirm. She placed both hands on the hilt, preparing to make her final move.

The asari sensed this change in the air and looked up from her wounds, her face ashen but no longer angry. The fury had left her as soon as she had lost.

"Good work," Sievra said admiringly.

Nya just continued to exist in her still position for what seemed like an eternity. There was only the sounds of rain and thunder to perceive, with what seemed like shouts of rage echoing from the upper levels. The sword in her hands never wavered, never trembled, held perfectly still.

With a deep breath, Nya raised her weapon. Silently, she then struck.

A flat gray blur then passed effortlessly through Sievra's neck, but it did not cut all the way through. The asari did not so much as jolt as the sword sliced her neck, but gave an involuntary shudder as viscous blood sprayed out in a wide arc from the gaping hole in her throat, coating Nya with a faint red mist. Sievra's arms then dropped to her sides and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head as the rest of the blood in her body oozed in thick rivulets down her neck from the razor-thin gash that marred her skin.

With a final, wheezing sigh, Sievra collapsed in an upright position, her head limply hanging down, drool and blood trailing from her lips while nearby, Nya let her sword slip from her hands.

Turning away from the dead asari, Nya began to race toward her daughter.

She called the child by her name in relief.

* * *

I double-timed it up the spiraling staircase, hearing Eyzn's own footsteps mockingly clank right over my head as he rushed to the exit at the roof. Lifting my shotgun up, I began firing indiscriminately, sending cones of white-hot death to shoot through the thin metal grating. Millions of tiny pings resounded as the impossibly small buckshot particles ricocheted off the stairs and the walls, peppering every surface with miniscule little holes.

Still, it had the desired effect I wanted: Eyzn screeched in a panic and nearly tripped over himself in his haste to escape, allowing me to have a few precious seconds to close the distance between us.

The staircase soon came to an end, revealing a mess of unfinished corridors all decked out in bare metal supports, the entire place looking more industrial than luxurious. I saw the lingering outline of Eyzn run down the only turn available to my perception, but I shot at him regardless, not caring that I had missed quite badly on that last burst.

I rushed around the corner in hot pursuit, barging through like a bull on a rampage, only to squeal to a stop shortly after. Eyzn stood in front of a large window, two and a half meters tall, his posture frantic as he realized that he had gone down a dead end. Immediately, I raised my shotgun to bear – there was no possible way I could miss.

 _Click_.

There _was_ the possibility that I had forgotten to reload, of course.

Eyzn began to laugh in relief, his hands thrown out to his sides as he reveled in my stupidity. "The best chance you've gotten to kill me in years and you've thrown it away!"

 _Not likely, you bastard,_ I thought to myself.

I hit the eject release for the final thermal clip to make sure that the shotgun truly did not have the capability to fire anymore before I adjusted my grip on the gun and hurled it savagely in Eyzn's direction. The shotgun sailed through the air like a missile and Eyzn had to duck in order to evade its trajectory. A wise move on his part – at the speed the gun was traveling, it would have shattered his visor had it hit. But since the gun missed Eyzn, it kept on traveling until it smashed into the standing window, causing a thousand cracks to immediately form upon its reflective face, the outside maelstrom roaring for admittance.

Eyzn made a panicked glance backwards towards the damaged window, but that was when I seized my chance. I lowered my body and charged forth like a linebacker, my shoulder thrown forward as I let out a fearsome bellow. Eyzn turned around and shrank as he saw me bearing down on him, but he had nowhere to run to.

The resulting tackle perfectly caught the quarian right upon his sternum, lifting him off his feet as our combined momentum sent us through the cracked window, resulting in it shattering around us, the high-pitched noise crashing into our ears. Thick shards splintered into tiny fragments, the safety glass too dulled to break the skin. It misted around us in a fine hail as a new wetness spattered against us as we heavily fell upon the outside catwalks, now fully at the whim from the elements of the raging thunderstorm.

Eyzn and I were soaked in an instant from the endless sheets of rain. The drops were so fat and falling so fast that they hurt as they smacked against us. My clothes clung to me as rainwater dribbled down my head. The booms from the thunder were so loud they seemed to shake the very foundations of the building. My vision turned black and white from the intense illumination of the thunder, completely overloading my capacity to see color in those brief microseconds.

Underneath me, Eyzn gave a kick, propelling me off of his body. I landed on my back at an awkward angle but the two of us stood back up at the same time, each breathing hard, trying to peer past the haze of rain that threatened to drown us both.

Eyzn's hood was flapping wildly from the intense breeze, obscuring his vision. The quarian unleashed a loud curse before grabbing at the fabric and ripping it off of his helmet. There was a tearing sound and the hood split right down the middle, ragged fibrous ends wilting as they were exposed to the rain.

"I don't need this anymore!" the quarian declared as he callously discarded the two pieces of his hood over the side of the building, both quickly disappearing into the darkened deluge as they plummeted nearly a hundred stories back down to earth. Now Eyzn's bare helmet made plinking noises from the rain hitting it, the quarian now looking strangely vulnerable without his traditional covering atop him.

Very slowly, Eyzn reached over and withdrew a wicked looking knife from a holster at his side. I recognized the blade immediately and many of the scars on my body gave a noticeable throb in recognition, particularly the one at my neck. How could I forget the sensation this knife made when it had been carving into me for months on end? How much of my blood had it spilled?

My own hand started to twitch towards the pistol that was still strapped to me, but I intrinsically knew that it was useless – Eyzn's shields were too strong and we were in too close quarters for me to make effective use of the weapon.

The two of us stood perfectly still, letting the rain fall against us while bolts of lightning crackled and hissed as their electric fingers split the night sky. The illumination of the city, not completely stifled from the monsoon, wafted upwards against us as we neared the edge of the building. Positioned like this, with the city below us and the heavens raging above, it felt like we were gods hovering above the mortal world, unconcerned with anything else but our own private battle.

As it was meant to be.

A blast of wind hit my back, forcing me to take a step forward. Eyzn moved in that time as well, his knife already carving a path through the heavy raindrops, a clear stream of water trailing from the point of his blade. I leaned back and the knife hissed through empty air, merely slicing at the rain.

" _Bosh'tet_ ," I heard Eyzn curse.

" _Fucker_ ," I retorted.

Eyzn crept towards me, making jabbing motions with his knife while I backpedaled as best as I could. Not so easy with this wind threatening to tear me right off this building. The breezy blasts were especially intense at this altitude, with no other obstructions forcing the wind speed to decrease. It was hard to keep our footing while upon this layered roof as we only had a metal walkway to guide us along. Guardrails were posted upon either side of the thin pathway to prevent us from stumbling into the tangled maze of tarps and antennas placed upon the roof, but the railings were not going to be of much help in these conditions, plus they restricted the number of places that I could evade to in order to keep out of Eyzn's reach.

The quarian seemed to realize that he indeed had the advantage here and stutter-stepped to bring himself close to stab me with his knife. Only his heel failed to gain traction on the wet grating and he slid forward a little, momentarily throwing off his balance. That was all I needed to reach forward and firmly clock Eyzn on the side of his head with a clenched fist.

Both of us yelled in pain. Eyzn sagged against the guardrail, his eyes reeling in their sockets, and I shook my fist from having plowed it into a very solid metal helmet, momentarily having to squint my eyes under the gaze of a passing spotlight. I had not broken any fingers while delivering that blow, but that would be a very real outcome if I kept up that foolish plan of attack.

"You…" Eyzn gasped as he righted himself, "…all of this… is _your_ fault. What you did to me… made me who I am."

I shook my head to clear some of the water that had been soaking my face, my mouth slightly open in a pant. My skin felt numb from the cold and I suppressed a shiver.

"I can correct that mistake, at least," I breathed.

 _Because I have never hated anyone as much as you, Eyzn._

Howling, Eyzn launched himself towards me, one arm outstretched, the other clutching his knife. Violently slashing at me through the blinding torrent, Eyzn kept screaming as he sliced this way and that, intending to resume his ritual of cutting me open and watching me bleed. I momentarily had a thought, a memory of me strapped to a gurney, helpless and merely watching as I heard Eyzn's laugh echo in my brain while cold steel pressed against my skin before a searing hot line replaced the sensation.

Never again, I vowed, concentrating every fiber of my body upon the approaching point, timing out the exact moment when I needed to move.

Eyzn hurled his arm down, intent on piercing me in a downward blow, but I sidestepped the attack with centimeters to spare. Eyzn's hand smashed against the guardrail, pulverizing his fingers, and he let go of the knife with a sharp cry. The blade tumbled down to the grating, within both of our reaches, but the buffeting rain was making it near impossible for us to see anything below our knees. Eyzn's eyes frantically searched for his weapon, but he was forced to give up as he witnessed me approaching.

With a righteous fury, I bellowed as I lashed out with my fists, striking the quarian twice in the chest, causing him to abruptly fold with a wheeze. Eyzn staggered backwards, his eyes now bare slits, as he quickly recovered and raised his own arms to dispense his own aggression upon me.

We then went at it.

The rain disguised many of the oncoming blows. Many times I could only blink as some of Eyzn's fists slammed into my face, causing my head to snap back. My own hits connected upon Eyzn as well, but it seemed like they were causing less damage to him than he was doing to me. Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth and one of my eyes began to rapidly swell. Eyzn had one advantage in this area that I could not hit him on the head for very long, giving his most precious area vital protection while my own head, conversely, was naked against the quarian's wrath.

Water and my blood flew through the air as thunder drowned out our screams. I laid a powerful haymaker into Eyzn's side and had a brief moment of victory as I felt one of the man's ribs crack. The quarian merely bent over for a moment, probably biting through his lip to quash any sounds of pain in order to deny me the satisfaction of seeing him in a wounded state.

The quarian suddenly kicked out a leg, striking me hard in the shin and causing me to limp a bit in retreat. Eyzn, taken by a surge of adrenaline, jumped forward and slugged me hard in the face, forcing me to a knee, and causing a gush of blood to spew from my mouth.

I coughed, seeing stars, my hands becoming cut up as they pressed into the rough metal of the grating.

"You never learned," Eyzn wheezed as he stood over me. " _I'm_ the better son!"

Breathless, Eyzn slammed his fist down on my face again.

And again.

And again.

The repeated hits all seemed to blur together, all striking at once. A bevy of blows _en masse_. As the blood dribbled from my face, my vision graying each time I was struck, I began to hallucinate. I could only see Nya before me. Every time I was hit, Nya's face, bare and loving, sputtered into existence. I could see her mouthing something to me but I could not determine what she was saying.

Another blow and this time I had a glimpse of my wife holding my daughter in her arms. The two of them waved to me, beckoning me over, to join them in the quiet sanctity that only a family could offer.

Through the pain, I incredibly began to feel a bit of clarity.

The punches, the longer they went on, were hurting less and less.

My eyes found understanding despite Eyzn whaling on me from above. My fingers curled back into fists as the muscles in my legs, arms, and back began to tense. I no longer was feeling the pain. How could this be? Even the agony that had originally been beset upon me had dissolved, fading into the nameless background of my mind, never to be touched again.

After all, when someone had spent months in a prison being tortured in the most brutal of methods over and over and over again, punches like this felt like tickles from a feather in comparison.

Fighting past the discomfort, my mouth twisted into a smile, making me look like a lunatic.

Eyzn saw the crazed grin on my face and he paused, dumbstruck, a fist still haltingly raised in the air. He must have thought that I had lost my mind in that moment, having suffered irreparable brain damage from all the blows he had laid into me.

His hesitation proved to be his undoing.

In a flash, as quickly as I could muster, I raised a leg and lashed it straight through the air, and the heel of my foot hit Eyzn's kneecap at the absolute perfect angle.

There was a sickening _crunch_ and Eyzn's leg bent backwards.

The most hideous scream I had ever heard passed from Eyzn's mouth as he lifted his head towards the clouds, unbearable pain shooting from his leg. Crippled, the quarian soon toppled to the ground, his hands scrambling at the ground while I shakily rose to my feet. The rain washed off the blood that clung to my lips and I watched Eyzn pathetically thrash on the ground, crying out as his leg refused to move. I had completely destroyed Eyzn's kneecap and the man's foot was curling upwards even more as his shin was now bent away from his calf at an extremely awkward angle. He tried to rise up to meet me, but the agony quickly consumed him and he sank back down with a gasp, trying very hard not to sob.

" _Wait!_ " he cried as I took a step towards him, trying to shout over the din of the rainstorm. "Wait, wait! Sam, wait! You've won! Let me live, please! Just let me live!"

Incredulous, I halted in place. Did Eyzn truly think that I would comply with such a ludicrous request? After _everything?_

"We're _family!"_ he continued to plead. "We're _brothers_ , Sam! You can't kill your brother!"

Raindrops beaded on Eyzn's visors, obscuring his wide eyes as he implored me for mercy. I felt the cold water trickle down my back, making me involuntarily shudder. Dampness clung to my beard and soaked me from head to toe and I had to breathe out a mouthful of water before I could have enough breath to speak.

"You forfeited your life the moment you took my daughter from me," I declared very clearly, my face turned to stone. Deafness thrummed lowly in my eardrums as the rage warmed my body. "You were never a part of _my_ family."

The expression of Eyzn's eyes noticeably darkened as I had torn the barest inclination of salvation away from him, a future that he had purposefully left dangling just out of reach… yet it had been a fiction all the same, just a convenient lie to ease the pain that the hard truth would cause.

That truth took hold of him and desperation rushed in to fill the gap that the lie had left.

Bursting from the wall of rain, Eyzn made one final push forward, his knife having been found from where it had fallen previously. On his one good leg, Eyzn jumped from where he had been laying, arm ramrod straight, intent on cleaving my heart in two. His visor hid a snarl and every muscle in his body was wired as tight as a drum, nearly humming as they all stretched beyond their natural limits.

It was just unfortunate for him that someone had tried this exact move on me before.

My heels squealed on the sopping metal as I edged myself out of the way, just in time for the lunge to miss me by an entire foot. Eyzn's eyes tracked my evasion in horror, but he was unable to stop the momentum of his body from carrying himself forward, confusion clouding his mind and clogging his throat with fear.

I suddenly caught Eyzn's wrist before he could fall again, though, and the two of us, our eyes locking from less than a meter away, discovered within ourselves who the strongest of us truly was. Eyzn found a horrible future reflected in my eyes and he withered from my gaze, a hoarse cry starting to bubble forth, only to be lost in the pouring storm.

I then slammed an open palm _up_ on Eyzn's elbow, the blow occurring out of nowhere. There was a crackling sound akin to someone trodding over a set of dried twigs, and I felt Eyzn's elbow shift up, out of alignment.

Lighting split the air and Eyzn screamed as each illuminated droplet fell past his head.

A bulge of broken bone began to poke against the quarian's enviro-suit on the opposite side of his elbow, but not puncturing it. My fingers opened and Eyzn began to collapse but not before I suddenly grabbed the back of his head and slammed him against the guardrail in a savage move. Metal clanged against metal and one of the hinges in Eyzn's visor bent from the brutal force, causing the covering to suddenly spring open and fall out of the apparatus, exposing the quarian's young face to the air of Earth.

The translucent covering, the bright color dulled in the darkness, bounced to the ground face-up. Eyzn fell beside it a second later. He began to weakly cough, one of his milky eyes now bloodshot and bulging. Snot dribbled down his nose, mixed with blood, all scourged away as the heavenly water eagerly found his face.

Thunder boomed over our heads, uncaring to our plight.

With only one good arm and leg, Eyzn forced himself upright, his maimed limbs sagging and listless. He spluttered weakly, already taken by an allergic reaction to something in the air. His breathing turned ragged and spittle drooled from his mouth. Static from the shield generator upon his back fizzled, the intruding rainwater finally wreaking havoc upon its systems. As Eyzn simply sat there, I slowly pulled my pistol from its holster, having clung next to me this whole time.

"I… I can _feel_ …" Eyzn wondered as he raised a hand to watch the raindrops pool in his palm. Water trickled down his face and he blinked in awe, his tongue darting out to taste the drops, completely taken by this new form of sensation.

I had seen this sort of sudden reverence before, I realized, with Nya. This was exactly how Nya had reacted when she had discovered water for the first time, in our shower. The fascination, the sudden subsidence of rational thought – these were the same emotions that both quarians had exhibited in such a similar moment.

The beautiful revelation of the things we took for granted.

"A… a place on the homeworld…" Eyzn whispered as he looked up towards the churning clouds. "I… I… I should have made a house there. I could have felt the air… tasted the sea… drowned in the sunlight… I deserved so much more than this. A _life_ , Sam… why couldn't I have a life?"

Eyzn heard the click next to him as I slotted in a thermal clip while I remained silent.

"That's just it, Sam," Eyzn continued. "I just wanted what you had. I wanted to be like _you_."

Unseen, even in the corner of his eye, I lifted the gun and flicked the safety off with a tiny _snickt!_

I shook my head, water drizzling off me. "No, Eyzn. You didn't want to be like me. You wanted to _be_ me."

Torturously, Eyzn turned to find the barrel of my pistol pointed straight at him. Tears were streaming from his eyes and his mouth was open in a heavy cry. A young face… a terrible face. With fumbling fingers, Eyzn found his visor and desperately tried to place it over his face, the glow from his eyes beginning to burn through the vividly blue glass.

"Sam…" he stumbled, "I—"

I fired.

Eyzn's visor exploded into a billion brilliant shards. A dark mass burst out of the back of Eyzn's head only for the rain to wash it away. The tumbling glass obscured what remained of the man's face and the quarian's body fell backward onto the walkway, his dead eyes staring mournfully up to the sky, his last view being of the wonderful hell that battled above him, a conflict where lightning and water entwined together.

But he had gone before he had even hit the ground, leaving me all alone.

Just me atop this building, drenched to the bone, bleeding and bruised.

But alive.

Still alive.

The rain hid my tears as I finally crumpled to the ground and cried in relief. For the first time in a long time, I was allowed a moment to bawl to my heart's content.

* * *

A few minutes later I finally trundled inside, dripping water wherever I walked as I found respite from the punishing weather. Every limb aching, I made my way down the steps, holding my side as discomfort began to flare from that location. I was shaking from the cold and from the departure of my emotions, hardly daring to believe that it was all over.

Normality. I had found it.

But my reprieve was not just yet to be granted unto me as, once I approached the main penthouse floor, I immediately beheld familiar faces as I grew closer. Recognition flitting through me, I began to break out into a jog as soon as I saw the sight upon the floor.

Iroa was sitting upright upon a pillar, his eyes relaxed and drooping, with Nya, who was unhurt, crouched next to him, holding his hand. Clutched on Nya's lap was our daughter's environmental bubble, the tiny infant just beginning to fall asleep again as she gave a playful yawn, her little limbs stretching towards the sky.

Nya heard me approaching and whirled in my direction, her eyes widening in joy as she saw that it was me.

"You're safe!" she softly exclaimed as I wordlessly crouched down and gave her a grateful hug. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes as she felt my body surround hers. "Is… is Eyzn…?"

I nodded as I sat down beside her. "It's done. It's finally done." I then looking on longingly at the napping infant whose bubble Nya clutched, never again to be let out of her sight.

My daughter. I had no words for how delicate and graceful the little baby was… the baby that I had thought had been lost forever. I swelled with amazement for the possibilities ahead of us… I could watch my daughter grow up, see her take her first steps, say her first word—

Next to us, Iroa gave a soft cough. "A… a pity. I had… hoped that… the boy would've seen sense."

Torn from my thoughts, I gave Nya a frown. "Have you given him any medi-gel?"

With dread, she gave a solemn shake of her head. "It's not working. I… I tried but if I give him any more, it'll stop his heart."

Nya then looked down to see Iroa gently squeezing her hand. The man's eyes glowed proudly behind his golden visor, his chest gently puffing up and down.

"You can give me all of it," Iroa assured her, his voice soft and calm. "I'm too far gone for you to do anything, anyway."

"Iro— _Father_ ," Nya pleaded, her voice cracking, "I can't do that to you!"

"It is a kindness you would be doing me, not a punishment," Iroa murmured after giving a tender laugh. "Ah… but to hear you call me that… I probably have never felt so fulfilled."

Iroa then tried to lift himself up a bit but he winced and grunted as the discomfort became too great. Alarmed, I went to his other side to steady him, to make him feel more comfortable as I tried to ignore the large bullet hole in his chest. The man then looked at me and gave me a singular but determined nod as he fiercely clenched my wrist. "Please don't waste any more time. _Do it_ , Sam."

Numbly, I looked up to Nya for affirmation, mouth dry, skin tingling. Her eyes found mine as she dipped her eyes down once, giving me permission to acquiesce to the man's wishes.

With a few presses upon the buttons of my omni-tool, there was a subtle hiss as the medi-gel began to flow through the miters right into Iroa's bloodstream. The man sighed and relaxed his body a bit, his fingers beginning to lose their grip.

Nya's father then pointed a finger to the child that Nya had in her lap. "My granddaughter," he murmured through a thick tongue, "she's very beautiful. I wonder, though… did… did you ever give her a name, Nya?"

I opened my mouth, about to lightly explain to Iroa the truth but Nya beat me to it.

" _Taylor_ ," she immediately said as she clutched the child's bubble tighter against her. "Her name is Taylor. Taylor'McLeod."

My jaw dropped. I gave a start unnoticed by the fading Iroa but Nya detected it right away. She looked down at the infant and back to me, trepidation clouding the look in her eyes.

"Do you like it?" she meekly asked me. "I know I should have asked—"

"Nya," I cut her off, as I was filled with an immense pride, a besotted smile immediately springing upon me, "I couldn't imagine a better name for her."

My wife gave a nervous yet grateful giggle and she looked down upon little Taylor with love, nearly exploding with glee herself.

" _Taylor_ ," Iroa slurred below us. "Taylor. Sounds like a human name."

"It's Sam's sister's name," Nya explained as she tightly held onto her father's hand, guiding him as he began to depart. "It's a name for my daughter to carry on, to respect the memory of her namesake."

Iroa politely chuckled as he tested the name out on his tongue again. " _Taylor_. Huh. Taylor. It's… it's perfect. _She's_ perfect."

With a final, shuddering breath, Iroa fell still.

The tiny light on his vocabulator blinked out.

Feeling empty once again, Nya and I continued to hold onto Iroa's hands even though they had loosened long ago. We kept holding on because we were afraid to approach this new future, a future that would begin the second that we would leave this building.

But still we lingered, holding onto what we had lost, taking solace in the company of each other, finding joy at being alive, at the reunification of our family, and that this period of madness had finally… _finally_ come to a close. We would mourn the friends and family that had given their lives for our happiness – Sagan and Iroa – and make sure that, even in death, they would be treated with the utmost respect and reverence.

I just hoped that, after all this, our daughter could grow up with the pure innocence that her parents had lost long ago. If that was still in her future, then all the pain we had suffered on her behalf would have been worth it in the end.

All of it.

* * *

 **A/N: The final chapter of _Patriarch_ will be submitted shortly. I hope you all have enjoyed reading it as much as I've been writing it.**

 **You all have my genuine and sincere thanks for sticking with me this whole way. It has been a pleasure and I hope that you have been entertained. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.**

 **Playlist:**

 **Sagan's Sacrifice: "The Legend of Excalibur" by Daniel Pemberton from the film _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword_**

 **A Childlike Revelation: "Two Delusions" by Steve Jablonsky from the film _Steamboy_**

 **Nya Wins, Sievra Loses: "Clash" by Henry Jackman from the film _Captain America: Civil War_**

 **The Final Battle: "Sea Wall" by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer from the film _Blade Runner 2049_**


	25. Chapter 22: A House Reformed

_One month later_

Sleep gently pushed me away, allowing the grasping throes of my consciousness to snag me and to drag me upwards towards the surface of attention.

My soft inhalation was timed to the moment that my eyes opened, my world beginning to build around me as everything became un-blurred after long seconds passed. Cool air rushed down my nostrils and I began to feel… everything – my first sensations for the day.

The outside air, the air not within my bed, was frigid and lingering, but I barely felt a chill. The soft but thick blankets that were draped up to my mid-torso were doing an admirable job in dispelling away the cold from my body, letting warmth encase me. The silk upon my skin hugged me, molding to my shape, keeping me safe from freezing. But if the sheets within my bed had not been enough in driving away the wintery bite, then perhaps the body partially draped across me, throbbing with heat, had helped do the trick.

Somewhat bemused, I lifted my head a couple inches to see that a gray arm was lazily draped across my chest, its owner melded against me to partake of my warmth, a nonviolent robbery of my own resources. There was a fluttering hot breath at my neck and I glanced over and made a soft and broad smile on instinct at the sight of Nya sleeping next to me. Well… more like she was sleeping _upon_ me.

I don't think I was ever going to take this, this sensation of waking up to being wrapped up in a loved one, for granted ever again. Knowing how easy it had been for my life to disintegrate without any warning, I was going to treasure these moments every single day.

Nya was conked out, which was particularly apparent because her facial expression at the moment was rather interesting and not very flattering. Her jaw was dropped open an inch, her tongue lolling to the side in her mouth, and her hair, usually messy all on its own, was flopped in every direction and somehow impossibly more tangled than before. As it was quite obvious, she was out of her suit because we had been previously engaged in a night of intense exertions just a few hours prior to whatever time it was right now. Her enviro-suit lay neatly folded upon a standing chair near the far wall of the bedroom, the rest of her metallic apparatuses perched perfectly on top of the foldable and stretchy bodysuit.

My wife mumbled in her sleep, a string of meaningless noises, and nudged herself more against me, looking to keep herself warm and snug, protected from the morning chill. I don't know if she intrinsically managed to sense that I was awake or that she was trying to steal more heat from me (as her own body circulation was noticeably poorer than an average human's) but I managed to find it irresistibly cute that she was squirming around like this, holding onto me like one would to a life preserver. Her smooth skin pressed against my side and I gave a murmur of my own, finding the position that I had awoken into to be quite pleasant.

The glow of the chronometer upon my nightstand drew my attention away for a beat as I moved my head to check the time and get it firmly locked into my head.

 _4:30 PST_ , it read.

" _What the hell?_ " I said out loud, perhaps a bit louder than intended because Nya gave a sleepy little grunt and nudged herself against me irritably. I was a bit too distracted in my own thoughts, to be honest, because I was not expecting to have woken up at 4:30 in the morning. I even craned my head towards the other side of the bed to have a look and sure enough, the windows were still dark. The light of the sun had not even hit us yet, which definitely indicated that it was still the early morning.

Weird, I considered, as I would have figured that last night's activities, plus all the casual drinking we had been doing prior, would have precluded our eventual wakening at about noon. I should have been so exhausted that I would have been in a coma for half a day. If this clock was right, and it sure looked like it was, I had only received about four hours of sleep total, at most.

I flopped my head against the pillow with a groan. It was going to be a long day.

The next half an hour was spent by me desperately trying to regain back some semblance of the sleep that I had been so firmly entwined in but that inclination never bothered to rear its head. It was like I had drunk a whole pot of coffee or tea beforehand and now I was paying the price, despite the fact that no stimulants were in my system. Jealous, I looked back over to Nya, whose unsuited body was still holding onto me tightly, wrapped up in her own peaceful little world.

Eventually, I had to admit defeat and relegate myself to the fact that I would just have to take a nap in the middle of the day or so as I carefully pried Nya's hand off of my chest before I rolled over to the side of the bed. Nya whimpered out in her sleep and her body curled into a fetal position all on its own, her lone hand clenching over the spot where I had been resting in a rather pathetic move. Still, Nya's biologic response to her husband and primary heat source suddenly departing was so pitiful and yet so endearing that I myself was consumed by the desire to lean back over and kiss her cheek as a gesture of reassurance.

I'll be damned, I noted as I pulled back. She actually _smiled_ in her sleep.

"I love you," I whispered into her ear. Cheesy and clichéd the saying might be but hell, it certainly does have the desired effect upon the right people.

I then pressed my feet to the floor, rubbing at my forehead to ward off the encroaching headache from sitting up too quickly, only to make a shiver as my bare soles made contact with the cold hardwood floor instead of my fuzzy slippers. I had to make a glance over the side so that I could aim my feet accordingly and encase them into the woolen moccasins. With that finished, I stood up and picked up my robe from the end of the bed and draped it over me since I was too lazy to put on any real clothes right about now. It was too early for that, in any case.

Leaving Nya to doze by herself, I edged out of the bedroom and into the living room of our large home. There were only the dimmest of lights on in the house right now, all being reflected off the glass door that led to the balcony, allowing my reflection to be clearly projected right back at me. Ordinarily, I could look out that door and see the towering pines scrape against our unobstructed view to the Pacific Ocean, but there was still the blackness of the early morning to contend with, obscuring what would normally be a breathtaking sight.

California. Our home… for good, this time.

The living room was simply furnished, mostly a result of Nya and I not taking enough time to do any online shopping for stuff to fill our house with, but there was this sort of minimalism to the entire picture that complimented a rather studious lifestyle. A couple square looking plush chairs combined with a very tasteful couch the color of cream all faced a brick fireplace, above which was where the holo-screen was perched. The walls were bare from a noticeable lack of art in the place, an issue that was more difficult to solve than it appeared to be. I really needed to go and find something to fill those empty voids, I sourly reminded myself. Too bad Nya and I had somewhat differing opinions on what classified as "fine art" these days. Nya's tastes ran to impressionistic creations while I tended to prefer art that was a little more abstract. Naturally, we tended to butt heads every time we tried to broach the subject of art, so that was a facet of home decoration that we had deliberately put off for a time.

But despite the bareness of the entire house and how it appeared, this was now our place of residence – our _permanent_ place of residence. Nya and I had moved some of our stuff from the Citadel over to here, in Santa Cruz, in order to help support our family and give us an idea of how to grow together. The apartment on the Citadel was going to function as a second home, but no longer as our main place to lay our heads. It had been decided between us a long time ago, more than a year in fact, that our kid was going to grow up knowing what it was like to have a planet to call their home instead of languishing on a space station for their childhood. A planet was the best place to raise a kid, in any case.

Our Taylor… our little girl… she would always know that Earth would be her home.

In the midst of the foyer, I placed my hands on my hips and gave a longing sigh as I gave a slow turn all the way around. All the damage that had been done during when Eyzn's goons had tried to storm this place had finally been fixed up a couple of weeks ago. It had taken a contractor several days to repair all the structural damage and to patch up all the bullet holes. The end result was that the place looked brand new – no evidence at all that there had been a firefight. Just the way I wanted it. I wanted my daughter to grow up without the threat or knowledge of violence looming over her head.

That girl deserved a better life than mine up to this point and I was pretty damn determined to give her that.

I then walked into her room, a lovingly styled space that combined modern and rustic elements together to create a very pleasing place to reside in. Two of the four walls of Taylor's room were lightly fogged glass, able to become transparent with the push of a button. Ordinarily, she would be able to have a view of the sea as well, and judging how a tinge of light was starting to warm up the night sky, she would be able to do just that in an hour or two.

Taylor lay in the middle of a plush bed within her environmental bubble. She was curled up underneath a warm blanket, sound asleep just like her mother. Taylor's hair was short and thin, colored a very fine black. She had definitely grown from the newborn that had been my first ever glimpse of her. At nearly a year old (by about a month or two) Taylor was looking pretty healthy for a girl of her age.

Very healthy, in fact. Not at all like when… when I had found Nya holding onto the body of the clone.

What a horrible day that had been.

The environmental bubble was transparent and made of a squishy material, very easily manipulated. There were rubbery ports that could be compartmentalized in case Nya or I needed to have direct hand contact with our child, which meant that Taylor was not completely isolated from her parents all the time, thankfully. Tubes and quietly humming fans were attached to little miters near the top of the bubble that connected to a cylindrical apparatus at the ceiling of the room, providing Taylor with fresh and safe air for her to breathe. The air could be heated and cooled as necessary, and many of these tubes helped provide our baby with food and water so that her dietary needs could be addressed.

All in all, everything was set up to make sure that Taylor had as normal of a life while growing up as possible.

I grabbed a rocking chair from the side of the room and gently placed it next to Taylor's bubble, trying to be as quiet as possible that I did not wake her. I then sat down upon it and proceeded to slowly rock myself back and forth for several minutes, utterly possessed by this desire to watch over my sleeping daughter, to protect her from harm.

"Taylor. My little Taylor. I don't think you can ever imagine how lucky you are," I whispered to the sleeping girl, quiet enough that it was even hard for me to hear myself. "Heh, _I'm_ even having trouble imagining it. You have it all: parents who love you, a wonderful home, and the promise of a good life ahead of you. And to think… I did not imagine that this was possible. In all my dreams, I would have never have thought that we would be together again, Taylor. All this time… and yet we _found_ you."

I looked down at the floor before I appraised the barely brightening window, my hands now clenched together. "I wonder, will you remember any of it? Your time away from us, I mean. I certainly hope not. You're way too young to have that looming over you. You deserve to grow up happy, joyful, guiltless. That's all your mother and I have ever wanted for you. You have the luxury of forgetting all of this, but I don't. And having you comprehend the sadness I felt when I thought you were gone… no child needs that."

The baby stirred and made a little mumble before smacking her lips and calming in her sleep.

I leaned forward and gingerly tapped the tips of my fingers against one another. "I don't know… maybe we'll tell you the whole story once you're old enough. It wouldn't be fair to keep you in the dark forever, but I hope you'll understand why we weren't going to tell you right away. It's not fair to put that kind of trauma on you when you're so young. Only when you're ready will your mother and I tell you everything."

I smiled as I then looked to the ceiling in thought, emitting a sigh to blow away any remnants of stress. "Although… I probably won't ever tell you about _my_ whole story and… how I got here. To this universe. Sorry, Taylor, but even you'd find all those aspects to be beyond belief. I mean, look at where you are! You are going to grow up in a time where you get to travel between worlds, to meet with alien species, and to have access to such fantastical technology that's still beyond my wildest dreams. Hell, the very fact that your _parents_ are different species altogether is something that's only just become second nature for me to consider. How are you to understand that when your father was growing up, space travel was a luxury for scientists and the super-rich, that we knew of no other intelligent life in the universe, that cancer and other genetic disorders could not be eradicated completely, and that this very planet was in very real danger from the frantic wars ongoing between differing factions within my race? I don't think I'll ever be able to explain that to you because you certainly won't believe me. The only person in this galaxy that knows my story is your mother, and she's going to take that secret all the way to her grave, I promise you."

The burnt orange rays of the sun were just starting to skim the tips of the lush sequoias, scything their way through the ocean fog that was creeping over the hills to the ocean. The approaching light began to warm the room and I rubbed at my cold hands eagerly.

" _I_ probably would've wanted to have been born in your time," I mumbled. "Maybe things would have been easier for me."

With a shrug, I leaned forward once more. "Maybe that doesn't matter all that much. Maybe what really matters is that you're going to grow up with parents who love you. A while back I don't even believe that I thought I was going to have kids in my lifetime. I was a different guy many years ago – someone who was too angry and filled with too much self-loathing. Just a careless idiot who stumbled upon your mother at what had to be the most fortuitous timing of my entire life. The both of us saved each other many times over and I learned to be a better person because of her. We had our ups and downs together, but I honestly think that the worst is all behind us, Taylor. I think that you're going to be the very best part of my life and I'm excited to share it with you."

"Not to mention all this," I added as I gesture to the skylight, which was proudly displaying the map of stars twinkling above our heads, coupled with the crisscrossing lines of aerial traffic as they traversed the globe, making their way to the mass relay on the far edge of the system or to the Citadel orbiting overhead. "I get to raise _you_ with the entire galaxy open to you. An entire _galaxy!_ Worlds upon worlds to explore! I never had that opportunity when I was a kid! You are going to have so much potential when you get older. There are going to be so many places for you to go, Taylor. I'm just excited to see what you will do with your life because you will never get a better shot than this."

In her bubble, the little girl turned over on her back and gave a peaceful sigh.

* * *

As the chaos in the wake of Eyzn's madness slowly began to wind down, everyone else began the process of going back to their regular lives, trying to deal with the fact that now every little event seemed to be rather boring by comparison. After getting shot at for days on end, a day spent at the office would feel even more mundane than usual.

Rie and Chandler survived their encounter in Tel Aviv just fine. Rie walked away with only minor flesh wounds while Chandler's, despite being more serious, healed within a week. Both were still relatively mobile and in good spirits once the craziness from the past few days had died down.

The two of them were actually in the process of moving to Earth as well, coincidentally. Rie had managed to land a residency opportunity at the Royal National Hospital over in London, Chandler's old stomping ground. She had been selected after going through a grueling hiring process and she was due to start her new position as one of the new lead orthopedic surgeons in a matter of weeks. Chandler had similarly found a new role as a manager for a large pharmaceutical company over in Hamburg, a quick twenty minute hop via shuttle from London.

The two of them, last I heard, were very excited to embark on their new careers. We have since made plans to meet up for dinner next week.

It would be like nothing had ever changed between us.

* * *

Iroa's body was transported back to Rannoch, whereupon he was buried within the very soil he was banished from, a privilege available to any quarian, despite his status as being exiled. Nya and I had figured that Rannoch was a fitting place for the man's last memory to reside, considering his attachment to the planet. He would have wanted his remains to have made it to the homeworld in the end.

As a final gesture to Iroa's sacrifice, Nya had submitted a formal proposal to the local civilian affairs council in Rannoch's capitol city, requesting that Iroa be posthumously be reinstated into the rolls of all the ships that he had served on and that he would no longer be listed as an exile. Nya listed the selfless achievements that Iroa had performed for his family since his banishment, indicating his worthiness to be treated as a quarian that deserved the recognition that had always eluded him in life. That way, Nya could finally proclaim that she had honored the man she had known as her father, for his last actions at attempting to bring her family back together.

That request is still pending.

* * *

What remained of Sagan was also dropped off at one of the main manufacturing hubs on Rannoch. The quarians, in the wake of a new policy passed down by the Admiralty, were now allowed to start reactivating and repairing geth while keeping in mind that their biases towards artificial intelligences were to be stifled in the wake of the immense progress the geth could be able to provide. It seemed only fitting that Nya and I hand Sagan over to the people who could do a sufficient job of putting him back together. Sagan would not be the same geth once he was reactivated as he would have no memory of his previous life, but I figured that he would have wanted his body to be used in the most efficient manner.

It would be a fitting way to pass off the memory of my friend.

Strangely enough, about a week ago I received a message from the tech that we had left Sagan with. The repair and refurbishment process was going very smoothly and they expected to have the geth reactivated within the next month. However, the tech had noticed some oddities about Sagan and left a message with me to see if I could shed some insight.

From what the tech had noted, Sagan's core memory had not been completely wiped upon his death, evidence of which was presented in the form of fragmented, but useable, packets of data still residing within the geth's main memory. This was unusual because geth were supposed to wipe all of their memory cores upon deactivation in reflex, yet there were still segments of locked memory embedded in Sagan.

As to what this meant, I had no idea. I never bothered to message the tech back because the implications of such a discovery were beyond my understanding.

But I wondered if it was too crazy for me to begin to hope.

* * *

A hand then touched my shoulder, gently gripping against me. I immediately felt a smile upon my lips. Who else would this new arrival be?

"Couldn't sleep?" I heard Nya ask me, softly so as not to wake the baby.

I lifted my hand to enclose around hers, keeping my gaze wrapped upon my child. "Something like that." I then stood up and turned to face my wife, noting that she too seemed a little sleepy, not to mention that she had deliberately stolen one of my fluffy robes so that she could walk around with some modesty. Actually, modesty was probably not the issue – Nya got cold way too easily without something covering her.

"I take it you were spending hours just watching Taylor again?"

I glanced back to the sleeping infant. "Only one hour this time. She's always been in the back of my mind lately." I smirked towards Nya. "You did good, honey."

She shook her head. " _We_ did good. Our daughter. Our family."

"Just the way I wanted it. And yet I have this feeling that she might just vanish every time I take my eyes off her. It's a ridiculous feeling, but I haven't been able to shake it just yet."

Now Nya started to tug at my arm, a hopeless look on her face. "She'll still be here later in the morning. It's too early for you to lose sleep over this." As I raised my head up a bit to look at her better, she gave a wide smile, showing her teeth, as she nudged me out of the room as her three-fingered hands guided me with her. "Come back to bed with me," was her sensuous order.

I bumped my eyebrows playfully. "Why? Need someone to warm you up?"

Nya smirked and she gave me a playful slap, one so light I barely felt her palm against my cheek. "Not _that_ way, you oaf. I can't sleep out of my suit if you're not in that bed with me. It's too damn early and I'm too damn cold."

"Oh? So it's for purely selfish reasons you're tearing me away from our daughter?" I grinned as well as I dug my heels into the floor, intentionally making it much more strenuous for Nya to budge me, which had an interesting effect on her.

The quarian growled as she shot over to my back and began to push on me in her frustration, using her head to ram into the small of my back while her hands bit at my shoulder blades, forcing me forward a step or two every couple of seconds. We were now out of Taylor's room by now and headed down the hallway toward our own bedroom, the air noticeably chillier in the larger corridor.

" _Rrrggh_ ," I heard Nya groan out as she continued to push me, a tricky endeavor considering I was playfully working against her. "You… bastard. Why must you make things so difficult?"

"Hey, I was having a nice moment with my daughter!" I protested with a laugh, amusing myself by making Nya's life more arduous than it needed to be. " _You're_ the one who barged in and ruined things!"

Nya huffed as she finally managed to shove the both of us into the room. "Only… because… I… was… _cold! Wagh!_ "

Nya let out a yell as I unexpectedly made a sidestepping motion, which caused her to pitch forward as her body's momentum had all been front-facing as she had been pushing against me. With no body in the way for her to lean against, Nya's hands pin-wheeled on empty air and she would have had a hard fall to look forward too, if the bed had not been right there to safely arrest her decent.

The mattress made a creaking noise and the sheets rippled as Nya landed upon the bed with a loud croak. She blinked for a moment, a bit uncertain as to her surroundings, before she slightly turned over on her side and beheld me with a sour look, trying to decide how hurt she should look from this semi-betrayal.

"I hope you're happy with yourself," she stated flatly, obvious not amused at my antics.

Meanwhile, I was covering an uncontrollable smile with a hand. "Only because I didn't expect that move to work so well. You took that pratfall like a champ."

Nya then sat up, her robe partially askew, about to angrily pout. But she barely had crossed her arms and scrunched in her shoulders before I walked over to her, put a hand under her chin, and oriented her head up so that I could softly kiss her on the lips.

Her anger evaporated on the spot as she gave a grateful mumble. I had learned long ago that the key to make Nya no longer angry at me, or at least to wipe away her facetious disappointment, was to ply her with affection. Physical intimacy, being a rarity for her, was an instant antidote in that regard.

After the kiss was broken, Nya still had an exasperated expression on her face, but it was quickly softening as her deeper inhibitions were coming to light.

"You certainly are a presumptuous one, Sam," she sighed with a forlorn grin.

I could only shrug. "Only because I know you too well, Nya."

"Deviant."

"Pretender."

"Get in this stupid bed, human," Nya growled as she shot a finger towards the empty side, fed up with this pointless bickering.

I too was bored of how this conversation was panning out, not to mention that sleep was starting to infringe upon me once more, all but dooming me to join my wife under the sheets. "Etiquette was apparently not a virtue on the flotilla," I lightly bit back, unable to resist one more parting shot.

Nya had to bite her lip to prevent her from delivering back a scathing remark in kind and the two of us began to prepare to get into bed in blissful silence.

I kicked off my robe first and rested my torso against the mountain of pillows, waiting for Nya to join me. Almost meek but quickly adopting a teasing look, Nya shed her own robe, giving me an unobstructed view of her body, from her breasts, to her toned stomach, down to the little shock of hair she had between her legs. Uncontrollably grinning, Nya quickly clambered into bed and rolled her body partially atop mine once more, warming me, and she placed her hands upon my chest and rested her head upon them, letting her look at my face to her heart's content.

The two of us spent several minutes just staring at each other with nothing less than complete adoration. Our fingers started to lightly brush each other's, just simple movements like that as we occasionally brought our heads closer to kiss in this position - light pecks and a quick melding of warm lips. We did not have plans to do anything too fancy right about now as we were rather tired but intimate little moments like these could make an entire day worthwhile, even when the day had barely started. Just us, alone in our perfect little world, cuddling with nothing but our skin deliciously mingling against each other, partaking in our own secret heat.

I wonder if Nya knew just how much I cared about her. More than anyone could ever fathom, would be the answer.

"Ours is not… a _normal_ relationship, is it?" I blurted out loud after fighting to keep my eyelids open for about a minute, momentarily disregarding my urge to fall asleep.

Nya laughed at that and gave her shoulders a tiny shrug. "I have no idea what _is_ normal anymore. Should life-or-death situations typically _not_ be included in this package that you call… normal? Or are you just comparing it to what you would have found back where you came from?"

"Honestly, I don't know," I murmured as one of my hands slid along Nya's bare back in an absentminded fashion. "I just don't have the first clue. The kind of person I was back then is… is so hard for me to recall. All the time I've spent here has slowly eroded the memories of my previous life. But I was not happy all those years ago. I was miserable, tired, a selfish bastard. I had wanted to end it all. And now… these little deviations from the 'normal' that I had known… knowing the difference, I really don't care. Normality doesn't matter anymore. We're _together_ and that's enough for me."

I then carefully gripped Nya's arms near the shoulders as I added steel to my voice. "We've led crazy lives, you and I. What we've seen together is enough madness for our lifetimes, not to mention that we're not even _close_ to being middle-aged, yet!"

Nya groaned and rested her forehead flat on my chest at that revelation. "Sam, you ruined the moment by reminding me how close we were to screwing everything up between us… and we're not even at our own halfway points!"

"Ruined? How could I have ruined anything, when we only have the best years of our lives in front of us?" I cupped Nya's cheeks before she rolled over onto her back so that we were both looking upwards, towards the ceiling. "We have _everything_ , Nya," I gestured in the air animatedly as she watched with pride and amusement. "Everything that we could ever want. We have each other, stronger than ever. We have our daughter back, and we can finally have the family that we've wanted for so long. Christ, Nya… we can watch our baby grow up. If _that_ doesn't excite you, then I don't know what will."

"Oh, I don't know," Nya snuggled against me mischievously. "I mean, there's always more we can do on the family front."

I raised my head slightly, incredulous. "The hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

My wife gave a subtle intimation, trying her best to look innocent. "I'm just saying, there's always room for expansion. I… well… maybe at some point you'd like someone else to join us? A _son_ , perhaps?"

I had to clasp my hands completely over my face as I hysterically began to howl in disbelief for half a minute. My body was shaking with laughter so hard that even Nya was starting to rattle along next to me, an eyebrow precariously arched upon her face.

" _Haah… ahhh…_ " I panted as I fought back peals. "You… you're kind of thinking a little too far ahead for me there, Nya. One kid is enough for now."

"Yet… you're not opposed to the idea to have more children down the line?"

I turned my head to indicate my seriousness to my wife while keeping a part of me aloof. "Ask me again in a couple of years. Deal?"

Nya immediately nodded at that. "Deal."

The cavernous serenity soon overwhelmed us as we lay next to each other, our hands clenched together, as we smiled and stared up at the ceiling. The two of us appreciated the quiet as we listened to each other's breathing, low thrums that existed in a small bubble of sound that only we could perceive. We wanted this moment to last so much, to the point where we refused to say a word to the other for fear of wasting the preciousness of our time together.

It was the company, the welcome presence, that we were so devoted to here. Lying upon this bed, holding onto Nya's hand, I could think of nowhere else that I wanted to be. Here, I felt safe, loved. Nothing else was pressing upon my mind. I could not think of anything else that I intrinsically desired, except to stay right here and reap the benefits of being with my family.

Within this house were all the people I loved the most. The luckiest man in the galaxy was right here, for he was no longer left wanting.

"Still… that's interesting," I finally murmured as I slightly turned my head to stare straight back into Nya's glowing eyes.

"What?" Nya whispered.

"It's just the fact that you aren't hesitating for such a big step like that. It's… humbling. You would willingly go through having a kid all over again just for me. I just thought that really means a lot. It does. Because if I make you so happy, if falling in love with me makes perfect sense, then… then coming here, finding you, was all worth it. All of it. If I made such a positive influence on your life, Nya, then maybe this is where I was always meant to be. Nowhere else, no matter the universe. With you… I'm _home_. For real, Nya. I'm home."

Nya shook her head but she gave me a warm look, her eyes never taking themselves off of me as she ruffled my hair gently and rubbed the back of her knuckles against my scratchy cheek. Her touch was warm and soothing – I was immediately calmed by it. Nya then leaned over, her lips at my ear, her breath tickling me, causing goosebumps to run up and down my body.

Then her light voice secretly sighed into my ear.

"What took you so long?"

* * *

 **A/N: With that, we have come to the end of _Patriarch_.**

 **Over a year and a half of combined writing, over 800,000 words total, and the trilogy of _The Quantum Error_ is finally complete. Writing the journey of Sam and Nya has been an immense blast from start to finish, and I couldn't be happier at the support I've received along the way. From all the heart-wrenching moments (and sometimes heart-attack inducing moments) this installment has created, I hope that you all find a shared sense of relief now that _Patriarch_ has come to a close. You all were a great audience to write for and I've constantly been entertained and touched from the feedback that I've received. I hope this happy ending makes up for all the panic attack moments that I had you endure - I know I've put you through the ringer in regards to twist after wrenching twist, but hopefully this brings about a sense of genuine closure.**

 **Speaking of closure, does this mean that this will really be the end of Sam and Nya's story, even now that they've got their daughter back? The honest answer is: I have no idea. I'm not going to make the mistake that I did last time about putting my line in the sand by saying that there will not be any more sequels, but as of right now, I don't really have a plan as to what I'd like to do, IF I was going to make a sequel. With that being said, I think that this trilogy of stories will more than suffice for right now. If there are to be any spinoffs, they're going to be quite a ways away as I want to try and experiment on more original fare first before returning to fanfiction.**

 **BUT... I'd keep an eye out in the near future, because Sam and Nya just might show up again in places that you might not expect!**

 **I'd like to extend special thanks to the following individuals: ArchReaperN7 (for letting me utilize a few worldbuilding ideas from his wheelhouse) and to Bossproject (for his elaborate analyses and insights which led me to adopt some changes for the betterment of the story).**

 **My sincere thanks to you all for helping to support _Patriarch_. I hope that I was able to deliver a story to your liking. As usual, you were a tremendous audience to write for and I hope to see you in the future, no matter where life takes us.**

 **Rob Sears, signing off.**


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